


Bloodletting

by Charlynch



Category: World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: F/F, Vampire Charlotte
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-27
Updated: 2019-09-20
Packaged: 2019-10-17 21:51:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 19
Words: 48,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17568599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Charlynch/pseuds/Charlynch
Summary: ((posted with ash/bratflair’s blessing, not intending to rip off anybody else’s idea, just loved the vampire thing and wanted to write vamp!charlotte))When a vampire queen with an infamous commitment problem falls in love, again, it goes exactly as well as one might imagine. One of her own vampiric progeny and ex-lover, Alexa, has already claimed the new object of Charlotte’s affections, but Becky, fresh faced and Irish with an easy smile that Charlotte would kill for, is as enchanted by Charlotte as every victim before her. Becky encourages Charlotte and Alexa to share, unintentionally relighting old flames and rekindling old rivalries.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> ((posted with ash/bratflair’s blessing, not intending to rip off anybody else’s idea, just loved the vampire thing and wanted to write vamp!charlotte. pls let me know if this is not cool and i’ll take it down.))

Summer was cold, and empty, and dead. A bleak Baal all swallowed by dark, the water closed over Summer’s head as though she’d never been at all. She’d been so warm half an hour ago, in Charlotte’s arms, but had begun to shiver as Charlotte drank, and drank, and drank, until she couldn’t stop and the girl was grey. Charlotte ate girls like winter eats flowers, suffocating them with herself, bleeding them near dry and ready to bloom again with spring. Even by vampire standards, Charlotte was old; she knew how to stop, when to stop, and exactly what she wanted. Most of the time; Summer was a casualty of both Charlotte’s mercurial anima and a wild lack of restraint brought on by hunger, a rare lapse in control.

“You gotta stop starving yourself for the sake of us, Charlie,” Sasha cooed, brushing Charlotte’s hair out of her face and flashing her fangs in a smirk as Charlotte shied away from her. “You need to feed more often and shit like this won’t happen. Fuck what people think.”

“You know we have to be more careful,” Charlotte snarled, turning on Sasha so quickly she immediately backed down, tossing her violet curls out of her face.

“I’m sorry,” Sasha huffed quietly as they walked back to Charlotte’s car. Charlotte walked with her usual swagger, her hair now silver, now gold in the insubstantial evening glow. Sasha studied her as she turned slightly as though to look back at the river before thinking better of it and pausing in profile, her silhouette cut effulgent in the moonlight. She didn’t look like a woman who had just murdered somebody, but then again, Sasha supposed it wasn’t murder. Not really. Prey was born to die. And Charlotte? That was a woman Sasha would argue the whole world had been born to die for. She was tall, golden, with eyes as unreadable as the grand veldt of the sky. She was a constellation of moments; hundreds of years strung together like fairy lights and twisted into woman, as historical and vital as the stories written by the stars. The kind of woman who’d wear a Balmain evening gown to dispose of a body was the kind of woman who deserved to kill. She’d earned it.

“Don’t apologise if you don’t mean it, darling,” Charlotte said, opening the car door for Sasha. “Insincerity doesn’t look good on you.”

“I just think you’re worrying more than you need to,” Sasha said tentatively as Charlotte got into the driver’s seat. “It’s not the nineties anymore.”

“That doesn’t make it safe,” Charlotte replied, pulling out of the clearing by the water and onto the road. “An open secret never did anybody any favours.”

Sasha didn’t respond, watching the trees peel past in dark flashes of green as they drove, the horizon beginning to pale. Sasha knew Charlotte was right, and yet the niggling knowledge that they could be so much more if they were unafraid gnawed at the back of her mind, insistent as toothache. Vampirism was never exactly a well kept secret anyway; in the early nineties, it all came out. Vampires weren’t just stories, but they weren’t exactly baby-eating demons either. They were just people. More powerful, more beautiful, more dependant on blood than most people, but still people all the same. The years had slid by and dragged change with them; vampires were out in society, and to nobody’s surprise, had mainly been hiding in plain sight in the nightlife businesses. There was a movement to shift vampires to animal blood that had been incredibly successful, largely in part to the shame and ostracisation, as well as litigation, enforced upon those who still drank from humans. Hell, there were even “vegan vamps” now; advances in synthesising blood had gone far enough that they could get by on the fake stuff alone. But that was half a life. Any blood other than human will keep a vampire “alive”, but they won’t be as fast, or as strong; Sasha remembered Charlotte explaining to her that it was like choosing to be human again, just with all the downsides that come with vampirism and none of the benefits. Sasha supposed that was better than starving, but thanks to Charlotte, she’d never experienced anything even remotely close to a deficit of blood. Charlotte took care of her girls, no matter what, and she wouldn’t have them eat anything less than the real thing.

“You’ve gotta be strong,” Charlotte would tell them whenever they mused on how it might be easier to survive and drink animal blood rather than constantly moving from town to town to avoid racking up a noticeable death toll. “I didn’t turn you so you could live a half life.”

Thus far, the city had been good to them. Charlotte’s business flourished, money flowed free and easily, debauchery was as common as pigeons. Not only that, but Charlotte had tapped into that subset of the human population who wanted to be fed on, girls who would come and warm her bed and fill her up with themselves, sleep off the blood loss, then go home. Charlotte’s girls always had plenty to eat, even if she had to go without to ensure there was enough to go round. They killed only when necessary, or in this case, accidentally.

“Hey Charlotte?” Sasha asked cautiously, sitting up in her seat. Charlotte did not look over, but she raised her eyebrow in acknowledgment, eyes on the road. “I’m hungry.”

“We’ll get you something on the way home,” Charlotte replied tonelessly, flicking the tip of her tongue across her fangs as she avoided looking at Sasha. “We’ll stop by Alexa’s place. She’s always got something available.”

Sasha nodded, smug at getting her way; too often, Charlotte told her to wait until they got home, fearing that she might leave a trail back to their hideout. Sasha didn’t see the big deal; Charlotte wasn’t exactly the kind of vampire queen you expected to find in a drag bar, but she respected Charlotte’s desire to keep her business safe and vamp friendly -which meant no cops- and obeyed her rules grudgingly. The bar was pretty unassuming, as far as any location full of drag queens could be; they hadn’t been rumbled yet. Sasha settled back in her seat and crossed her legs; a trip to Alexa’s place was always fun. Especially with Charlotte, who had been in love with Alexa until she wasn’t anymore. It was complicated, especially considering Charlotte had turned Alexa in the first place, and Sasha never tired of the watching the two women try to navigate the angry sexual tension that still sparked and glittered between them. Sasha kicked her feet up onto the dashboard, smirking to herself a little as she noticed Charlotte’s irritation. She wasn’t sure what it was, but something told her tonight was about to get a lot more interesting.

 

The chandeliers swayed threateningly as Charlotte slammed the door open, stalking across the threshold to the reception desk with cold determination. Sasha followed, looking around at the way the people in the lobby parted for them with a self-satisfied smile.

“Sasha,” the petite blonde behind the desk greeted them, raising a perfectly arched brow. “You look like the cat that got the cream as usual. Charlotte, you look more your age every time I lay eyes on you.”

“And yet you still say my name at night no matter who’s between your sheets,” Charlotte sneered coolly, looking Alexa up and down with such aggressive disdain that Sasha found herself shivering pleasantly beside her. Alexa was momentarily silenced. “What do you have?”

“For you? Nothing,” Alexa snapped, slamming the logbook on the countertop closed. Charlotte’s jab about Alexa’s lingering attraction to her had clearly hurt.

“Please Alexa,” Sasha whined, leaning over the desk. “I’m hungry.”

Alexa’s piercingly blue eyes narrowed as she flicked her gaze between Charlotte and Sasha with careful consideration. She bit her lip, flashing the barest glimpse of the fangs Charlotte gave her, and sighed.

“Alright. But you take what I give you, and she-“ Alexa jerked her head in Charlotte’s direction without looking at her. “Gets nothing.”

“I’ve just fed,” Charlotte said coldly. “I don’t need anything.”

Alexa ignored her, taking a set of keys from the hooks behind her and leading them off down a long corridor. Sasha glanced at Charlotte, searching for a reaction in her peerless, aristocratic face. They passed rooms where screams could be heard, the hallway reverberating with moans, some rooms that were dead quiet but clearly occupied, and rooms that stood empty and cold. No matter what noise crept from beneath the doors lining the corridor, Charlotte’s mask did not flicker, and she remained steely and expressionless. As they finally reached a room, and Alexa began to unlock the door, Charlotte tapped Sasha’s shoulder.

“I’ll sit in the bar until you’re done,” Charlotte told her, turning on her heel and striding away before Alexa had the chance to tell her she wasn’t supposed to be in her establishment at all.

 

Charlotte sat at the end of the bar with a sigh, and beckoned over the bartender without looking up.

“Cheer up love, might never happen,” the bartender said, the smile in her voice apparent even through the throaty Irish lilt that coloured her words. Charlotte finally looked up, and was instantly floored; it’d been a while since that had happened. A human, with brilliant vermillion hair, eyes the colour of secrets and the loveliest face Charlotte had ever seen.

“Yeah, the hair catches folk off guard at first so it does,” the bartender continued, taking Charlotte’s expression for shock. “What can I get ya?”

“What do you have?” Charlotte purred in response, leaning in, careful to afford the bartender a generous view of her cleavage, and a glimpse of her fangs. The bartender looked unfazed, but Charlotte could hear the barest hum of her heart rate picking up, her blood rushing a little faster. _No_ _matter_ _how_ _cool_ _you_ _play_ _it_ , _you’re_ _interested_ , Charlotte thought to herself, shaking her golden mane out of her face with satisfaction.

“I’m not one of Alexa’s girls, if that’s what you mean,” the bartender said. “I don’t do the whole being drank from thing, I’m just here to work the bar.”

“What’s your name?” Charlotte asked, as though the bartender hadn’t spoken.

“Becky,” Becky replied, a bemused smile playing about the corners of her mouth. She’d met many a vampire in her tenure as bartender at Alexa’s hotel, but none had been quite so intense as this towering blonde with eyes like an angry sea. None had been quite so thirsty either, in every sense of the word; Becky could see the way Charlotte leaned toward her, but she hadn’t missed her fangs either, glinting sharply as they punctuated her sentences.

“I want you,” Charlotte said directly. “But let’s start with some drinks. Pour two of whatever you usually have, and take your break.”

Becky studied Charlotte for a long moment; she could tell she wasn’t being glamoured, but she wanted to obey her anyway, and that felt unnatural. Bowing to any authority had never been her thing, but the commanding note in Charlotte’s voice was scintillating, irresistibly compelling.

“Naomi,” Becky yelled at a beautiful dark-haired woman sitting down the other end of the bar. “I wanna take my break. Can you pick up for a bit?”

Naomi nodded and moved behind the bar as Becky busied herself pouring two whiskies. She placed the glass before Charlotte with a decisive thud, and moved round the bar to come sit beside her.

“So,” Becky said, running her fingertip across the rim of her glass. “I need to know what I’m gonna be screamin’ later, judging by how confident you seem to be in your assumption that you’re takin’ me home with you.”

Charlotte raised an eyebrow; a spitfire. She liked that. And she was direct too. Saved a lot of time.

“Cutting right to the chase?” Charlotte mused, running the tip of her tongue across her fangs contemplatively. “You’re brave. Aren’t you scared I’ll eat a sweet little thing like you all up?”

“That’s what I’m hopin’ for,” Becky shot back, cocking her head a little as she studied Charlotte sipping her whisky. “No point wastin’ words.”

“When do you finish?” Charlotte asked.

“An hour.”

“Come back with me,” Charlotte instructed, downing the rest of her whisky in one.

“Have you fallen for me?” Becky teased, her eyes sparkling. “I’ll come back with you. Just gotta check in with Alexa first.”

Fuck. Alexa. Of course, Charlotte had forgotten the -quite literally- small obstacle between her and the enchanting Irish woman with blood that smelled like heaven and eyes that promised Charlotte would never, ever forget her.

“You still haven’t told me your name,” Becky reminded her, finishing her drink and meeting Charlotte’s eyes with a composed intensity that made the out of Charlotte’s stomach flutter.

“Charlotte!” Alexa’s bark cut across their cosy conversation like a vein of lightning, leaving the air sizzling in its wake. Her blue eyes blazed, and for a moment, Charlotte missed her. “Get away from her.”

“Charlotte,” Becky tried out Charlotte’s name, rolling it around her mouth like a particularly expensive and delicious chocolate. “Suits you.”

“Speak of the devil, and she shall appear,” Charlotte drawled, standing up to face down Alexa, who did not balk at the attempt at intimidation.

“Becky, we agreed,” Alexa said, refusing to take her eyes off Charlotte. “You’re mine.”

“I agreed to a date, Lexi. I didn’t agree to anythin’ exclusive,” Becky replied, her brows knitting in confusion.

“Wow, you hang around Charlotte for five minutes and you sound just like her,” Alexa replied with a sarcastic smile. Becky merely looked lost, Alexa’s barbed remark falling flat in the face of Becky’s absolute nonchalance. Charlotte merely observed, running her fingertips across her lips.

“She’s mine,” Alexa repeated, staring Charlotte down. Charlotte hissed softly in response. “She agreed to let me feed, and only me.”

“Thought you weren’t one of Alexa’s girls, Becky?” Charlotte asked, refusing to break eye contact with Alexa.

“I’m not,” Becky said hotly, flushing. “I just... agreed to help her out.”

“We can always share, Lexi,” Charlotte cooed, reaching out to loop her arm around Becky’s waist. She could hear Becky’s pulse jump the moment she made contact, and smiled.

“You know what? Just go and take her with you,” Alexa said witheringly. “I haven’t fed from her yet anyway. You always did like virgins.”

Charlotte could tell she was causing Alexa some distress; perhaps her sweet little Lexi really liked this girl after all. Charlotte didn’t blame her; there was something irresistible and magnetic about Becky’s entire being, something powerful that made Charlotte want her more than she’d ever wanted anything. Before Charlotte could reply, Sasha appeared, looking dazed and giggly.

“Blooddrunk,” Charlotte said with disgust, watching as Sasha struggled to wend her way over to the bar. “Lexi you better go check the girl. She’s had a lot.”

Without a word, Alexa turned on her heel, clearly fuming, and stormed from the bar. With a shrug, Charlotte moved to loop her arm around Sasha, who pressed a bloody kiss to Charlotte’s face, missing her lips as Charlotte smoothly turned away from her embrace.

“If you don’t mind that I have to deal with this idiot first,” Charlotte said, turning to Becky as she smoothly picked Sasha up, carrying her bridal style. “I’d still love to take you home with me.”

“You know what?” Becky said with a smile. “You sound like an adventure. I’m in.”


	2. Chapter 2

There are many things in life that come as unpleasant surprises, such as birthday cards without money in them, Facebook messages from high school classmates trying to sell you mid-level marketing products, and spoiled food in the back of the fridge. However, Alexa had learned that, in death, the opportunity for unpleasant surprises had somehow only increased exponentially, especially if Charlotte was involved. As the door of the room creaked open, the acrid copper scent of blood rolled over Alexa in a wave, sending her staggering backward. It had been a long time since she’d drank real blood herself, despite Charlotte’s insistence that she do so when she’d first turned her, and the smell was overwhelming. Three girls were slumped on the bed; two were unconscious, one sat upright looking dangerously pale.

“Did Sasha do this to you?” Alexa demanded, immediately moving to check the two girls for signs of life. “And where did the other two come from? I left her with you.”

“They’re my friends, they wanted to try the whole fangfucker thing,” the girl gasped weakly. “She wasn’t really interested, she just said she was hungry.”

“Who the fuck drinks three girls nearly dry? No wonder she was blooddrunk,” Alexa groaned, more to herself than anybody else. “We gotta get you and your friends to a hospital.”

“Aren’t you scared we’ll rat you out?” the girl asked fearfully as Alexa made hasty arrangements with her staff via text message to come collect the girls.

“Not at all,” Alexa said sweetly, pity dripping from her words in syrupy strands. “You should be more afraid of what we’d do if we thought you were even considering ratting us out.”

The girl fell silent, and seemed to grow even paler. Alexa left the room, content to allow her staff to take things from there; she was not in the mood to clean up another of Charlotte’s messes. Not tonight. She heaved a sigh as she let herself into her own “room”; the penthouse that occupied the entire top floor of the hotel had felt like a fitting place to make her home at the time, but now it just felt empty. Texting Charlotte meant admitting she still had her number, but Alexa was too angry to care.  
_Get over here right now_ , Alexa demanded, typing so aggressively her nails clattered against her phone screen. Her phone buzzed with a response seconds later.  
_Too close to dawn. And she’s busy with a girl so you’re just gonna have to wait, boo_  
Alexa hurled her phone onto her bed with a frustrated shriek, throwing herself down face first after it. Charlotte couldn’t even respond herself; Alexa guessed Carmella was manning her phone whilst she was preoccupied with Becky. The blackout curtains draped over every window obscured even the smallest glimmer of sky, but the weariness in Alexa’s bones told her that dawn was about to break. At least she could take comfort in the fact that, between Sasha and her insistence on taking Becky home with her, Charlotte probably hadn’t given herself enough time to sink her fangs -or anything else- into her new toy.  
She hoped, at least. Alexa rolled over onto her back and sighed. From the moment Charlotte had stalked into her life like a great black cat, bringing bad luck in her wake, Alexa’s world had unravelled. Her family turned their back on her. She’d never see the sun again. She’d lost everybody she loved, and for what? A decision she’d made without thinking it through, a romance that had been turbulent at best, a moment where she’d felt absolute unified with another person that had turned out to mean nothing. She supposed, if she was being completely fair, she had pushed Charlotte away, but Charlotte had been quick enough to burn bridges without giving her a second chance. It was easier, she decided, to believe Charlotte had loved her until she had gotten difficult, rather than consider the prospect she might have broken Charlotte’s heart. Beneath all the tall, willowy, platinum blonde vampire queen schtick, the woman had the structural integrity of a marshmallow; she was soft, sweet and infinitely loving, and Alexa had brought her walls down then kicked her where it hurt. Maybe all of this wasn’t Charlotte’s fault after all. Maybe both them were to blame. Alexa’s words from the night it had all fallen apart still burned in her throat; _“maybe I don’t love you as much as I thought I did”._  
Whatever. She didn’t wanna think about that right now. Alexa rolled over onto her front and smashed her face into her pillow; she’d deal with the latest disaster at dusk. Right now, all she could do was sleep.

 

Becky had enchanted Charlotte so efficiently that she found herself glancing away from the road to look at Becky in the passenger seat more than once; even at rest, her expression had a stoic sort of determination, beautiful but at the same time strangely intense. In profile, Charlotte could not help but admire her perfectly straight nose with an impudent tilt to the tip, and incredibly sharp jawline. Even her eyes seemed to speak of a constant quiet self satisfaction, a comfort in her own skin that made Charlotte gravitate toward her instantly. Sasha was curled up in the back, gleefully wiggling along to the music on the car radio.

“Didn’t know you could get drunk on blood,” Becky said with mild interest, shifting in her seat to look at Sasha who smiled at her, looking disarmingly cute wrapped in Charlotte’s jacket even in spite of her blood-stained lips and clothes.

“It takes some doing, but if you drink enough of it, then sure,” Charlotte replied with a shrug. “Part of what keeps vampires from just eating their way through everybody in their territory in a night. It’s not always hunger that drives the urge to feed.”

“Do you wanna get drunk tonight?” Becky asked pointedly. Charlotte laughed.

“Oh sweetheart,” Charlotte said with a wry smile. “It takes an awful lot to get _me_ drunk. On your own, you wouldn’t even get me tipsy, even if I drank you dry.”

Becky swallowed nervously, her breath catching in her throat. She couldn’t explain why, but Charlotte talking about her that way was the most unsettling combination of painfully attractive and deeply frightening that she’d ever experienced. Becky realised with a jolt that Charlotte was still speaking.

“Besides,” Charlotte was saying. “I didn’t bring you home to feed from you. I wanted your company.”

“That’s an interestin’way to say you wanted a ride,” Becky quipped, enjoying the lazy battle of control she’d somehow ended up in. Trading flirtatious barbs with a vampire hadn’t been necessarily how she’d planned on spending her evening. Charlotte didn’t reply, merely smiling enigmatically. Becky bit her lip, worried she’d ruined her shot with the gorgeous blonde by being too cocky. Charlotte tried not to look at her; the sight just made her want to kiss her.

“So how did you end up working at Alexa’s?” Charlotte asked politely, sensing the tension. It felt like a better conversation opener than “hey so what’s going on between you and my ex?”

“Got hurt at my old job, had to take somethin’ else for a while, but I couldn’t find anythin’ that paid enough for me to keep my flat,” Becky said sadly. “Alexa’s place was lookin’ for bar staff who didn’t mind dealing with vamps, and a room to live in at the hotel was included rent-free, so I thought it seemed like a good solution to all my problems.”

“Don’t worry about your problems. I’ll make you forget whatever you need to forget,” Charlotte replied, barely audible, and Becky felt her mouth go dry. She tried not to look at Charlotte’s hands. “Anyway, where did you work before? I’m not going to pretend I didn’t notice you’re buff for a barmaid.”

“All these questions about me,” Becky laughed. “And I barely know a thing about you. If you wanna know about my past, you gotta tell me what happened between you and Alexa.”

“Well played,” Charlotte answered, slightly impressed with Becky’s deflection tactics despite her irritation. “Sorry, didn’t mean to pry.”

“It’s okay, I’m not gonna lie, all I wanna do is ask about vampire stuff,” Becky said with a grin. “Never really encountered many of you lot on such a... personal level before.”

“Ask away,” Charlotte shrugged, before jerking her thumb over her shoulder in Sasha’s direction. “She could probably do with the education.”

“What’s being bitten like?” Becky asked shyly.

“Ask stupid questions like that, and you’ll find out,” Charlotte growled. “Don’t be a tease.”

“Okay, okay,” Becky huffed. “Did you turn all the vampires around here?”

“Some,” Charlotte conceded. “Not all. I never turn men, and it takes some very specific circumstances to make me turn somebody.”

“Can you eat human food?”

“No. We can, thankfully, still drink alcohol, tea, coffee, kombucha, soda,” Charlotte listed. “But we can’t eat your food.”

“Is Alexa new like Sasha?” Becky asked tentatively. Charlotte sighed.

“No, Lexi... Alexa was turned a while ago now,” Charlotte muttered, pulling off into a back alley. “We’re here.”

Becky peered out the window and gasped in surprise. She’d expected to see nothing but the dreary shadows of air con units haphazardly plastered to the furtively hunched backs of buildings, assorted cars crouching in the dark belching polluted dragon breath, maybe some scattered rubbish bins. The back of the bar was not at all what Becky had expected; there was just enough space for Charlotte’s car, the rest of the space was populated by a beautiful garden. Flourishes of wisteria climbed the graffitied walls, daisies clamoured at the edges of the little path to the back door, a few scattered tables and chairs were strategically placed to enjoy the flowers as much as possible.

“Wow,” Becky breathed, touching a hydrangea bush and sending droplets of dew scattering onto the path.

“It used to just be a parking lot, but Bayley came up with the idea of turning it into a little outdoor space for folks to use in Summer,” Charlotte said as she lifted Sasha out of the car and kicked the door closed behind her. “I got kind of used to taking care of the flowers after Bayley left. Started to enjoy it even.”

Becky could only nod in response as Charlotte led her to the back door, kicking it sharply three times. After a moment, a ridiculously pretty girl with long, flowing hair and mischievous smile answered.

“Mella,” Sasha slurred as a greeting.

“Again?” the girl asked, and Charlotte nodded.

“Becky, this is Carmella,” Charlotte gestured lazily at the girl, who made no effort to conceal the way she dragged her gaze up and down Becky as though she was assessing a particularly rare and intriguing antique.

“I’m Becky,” Becky said awkwardly, waving at Carmella, who nodded in acknowledgement before turning to try and prop up Sasha.

“I’m gonna take her to bed,” Carmella advised in an undertone, and Charlotte nodded. Wordlessly, she gestured for Becky to follow her as Carmella started trying to lead a very reluctant Sasha bedward.

As they stood alone in the stairwell, there was a beat; a moment between them where they both seemed to hold their breath. Charlotte could hear the wild staccato of Becky’s heart as the air between them seemed almost to shiver, the seconds of silence unfurling, suffocating. Becky closed the distance between them, standing on her tiptoes to kiss Charlotte who instantly seemed to melt into her touch, pulling her close with a fierce want that made Becky tremble.

“Take me to bed.”

 

 

Becky let herself fall backward with a shuddering breath, her chest heaving as Charlotte slowly drew back and trailed a perfectly manicured fingertip up Becky’s thigh. Becky found herself shivering with a strange combination of primal fear and desperate attraction; Charlotte, her braids coming undone, tendrils of silvery hair sticking to her cheeks, looked ferociously beautiful. Her pupils were so dilated that the oceanic blue of her eyes was barely visible, her fangs extended. Her lipstick had left black cherry kisses down the insides of Becky’s thighs, smudging like dark gore on Charlotte’s lips.

“Sorry,” Charlotte breathed, briefly gesturing at her face before climbing on top of Becky and pressing a hot kiss to her collarbone. Becky shifted slightly as she felt the slight drag of Charlotte’s fangs against her skin through the kiss. “I don’t do it on purpose. Being turned on and the whole hunting thing? Turns out it’s very closely linked. It’s a pain in the ass.”

“You didn’t have to do much huntin’,” Becky replied with a smile, touching Charlotte’s chin to tilt her face toward her. Her eyes were already returning to normal, the blue-green glittering with an ethereal sort of peace as Becky met her gaze.

“No,” Charlotte replied with a smirk. “You fell right into my arms. If I had been hunting you, you’d be dead meat.”

“Does that make me really stupid prey, or you an excellent predator?” Becky asked, raising an eyebrow. Charlotte looked thoughtful for a moment.

“Both,” she said finally, laughing as Becky tried and failed to roll her over.

“This was nice,” Becky said through a mouthful of Charlotte’s hair as Charlotte clumsily dipped to press another kiss to her neck. “It makes me sad that this is just a one time thing.”

“Doesn’t have to be,” Charlotte shrugged, sitting up, straddling Becky, who gasped at the warmth of her against her stomach. As Charlotte moved, her shirt hiked up a little to expose the deep line of her iliac furrow that seemed to lead with promise beyond the sleek black lace of her underwear. Becky reached out to trace the outline of Charlotte’s abs, wriggling to sit up against the masses of pillows.

“Holy shit, you’re fuckin’ ripped,” Becky said in awe, leaning forward to ease Charlotte’s shirt off. Charlotte grabbed her wrists so quickly that Becky started in fright, and Charlotte let her go as if she’d been burned.

“Did I hurt you?” Charlotte asked worriedly, reaching out tentatively to touch Becky’s hands. Becky paused for a moment, taken aback by her sudden softness; she’d seemed so steely, and yet she’d taken Becky to bed and kissed her like she loved her.

“No, I- uh... you just surprised me,” Becky laughed apologetically. “I’m sorry for tryin’ to overstep boundaries.”

“We can work up to that,” Charlotte said primly, shifting to move off of Becky, though her expression turned to one of regret. “It’s past dawn.”

“Does that mean you have to sleep?” Becky asked, sitting up as Charlotte climbed out of the bed and slowly began to undress with her back to Becky, who politely averted her eyes. She wasn’t sure why; she’d just spent the better part of the early hours of the morning letting this woman do whatever she wanted with her, and yet that moment of vulnerability as she undressed seemed so deeply private that Becky was compelled to look away.

“Yeah,” Charlotte answered, pulling on a huge oversized t-shirt. Becky had to admit, Charlotte’s bedtime routine was surprisingly normal. Briefly, she wondered if she brushed her fangs extra carefully when she brushed her teeth, finding herself smiling at the mental image. The woman who had, moments ago, looked like the most vital, vicious, beautiful monster Becky had ever seen, seemed soft and almost innocent as she carefully dabbed off her makeup, sitting cross-legged on the bed beside Becky.

“You can stay with me and sleep a while, or I can get one of the human girls to show you out,” Charlotte replied without looking at Becky. “Alexa’s bound to be furious that you’re not back at the hotel.”

“I wanna stay with you,” Becky said softly. “Alexa doesn’t own me.”

“Tell her that,” Charlotte scoffed, getting into bed beside Becky. “I had fun with you tonight.”

“I want this to happen again,” Becky said, lying down to face Charlotte, the blanket pulled up to cover her breasts. She suddenly felt very naked. Charlotte reached out and touched her cheek with her fingertips, so gently that Becky shivered. She was beautiful almost beyond belief, her hair a bright cloud around her shoulders, a slight flush colouring her cheeks beneath her tan. Charlotte met Becky’s eyes, making the conscious decision not to let her gaze fall upon the butterfly-delicate thrum of her pulse beneath her skin on her neck.

“Good,” Charlotte replied. “I like you.”

“I like you too,” Becky said with a smile, leaning in to brush a light kiss to Charlotte’s lips. Charlotte gasped softly, then yawned.

“You can’t be coy about a kiss, you undressed me before we were even through the bedroom door,” Becky laughed, shoving Charlotte playfully. Charlotte responded by wrapping her arms around Becky and drawing her close, her face buried in Becky’s hair. Becky had to pause for a moment to register that she was being spooned by a vampire, a lethal supernatural force, a killing machine in the loveliest package imaginable. As she felt Charlotte press a soft kiss to her neck, just beneath her jawline, she tried not to imagine Charlotte’s hands wandering across her body as she let her fangs slide into Becky’s skin, the needle-sharp pressure then agonising push of Charlotte sinking into her, letting her bleed, the soft pulse of Charlotte swallowing against her, coming undone in Charlotte’s hands as she fed from her with a wild strength Becky could not resist. Becky let out a soft gasp, shifting uncomfortably in Charlotte’s arms as she became aware of her own arousal. Charlotte was already beginning to doze; Becky couldn’t see the dawn breaking because of the drapes in Charlotte’s bedroom, but she could hear the birds clamouring for sunrise noisily outside.

“Hey Charlotte?” Becky whispered as she turned to check if Charlotte was asleep, lightly brushing a stray blonde curl out of Charlotte’s face. “I’ll let you sleep.”

Charlotte, already quite literally dead to the world, did not reply, her eyelashes casting long shadows on her cheeks as she slept. Becky felt like she was lying next to a sleeping lion; in a way, she supposed she was.

 

 

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

Waking up in Charlotte’s arms at midday was not as awkward as Becky had imagined it might be. For one, Charlotte was still fast asleep. She was a beautiful deadweight, draped over Becky like something that belonged in The Louvre, shackled in marble. Becky wouldn’t have admitted to it, but she lay in Charlotte’s embrace for far longer than she needed to, before eventually wriggling out from under her and getting dressed in her clothes from the night before with a grimace. This particular walk of shame was going to be fun. She spared a brief glance at her phone; a few texts from Alexa. Nothing good would come of those. Although she knew she couldn’t possibly wake Charlotte up, Becky still tried to be as quiet as possible as she eased her way out of the door and crept along the corridor, trying to remember the way she came in. She paused by an open door to lean in, hoping one of the humans Charlotte had mentioned might be able to help her find her way out. Inside, Carmella was fussing over a dishevelled looking lump under her duvet. Curled up in Carmella’s bed, Sasha looked deceptively angelic.

“Does this happen a lot?” Becky asked, as the girl Charlotte had introduced as Carmella sat down cross legged beside Sasha’s sleeping form. She gestured for Becky to come inside.

“What, Sasha?” Carmella laughed shortly, moving a little so Becky could sit down beside her. “Not often enough to be a problem. She’s just hungry. Charlotte only turned her recently, so even though she’s young and super strong, she needs to feed more than the older girls. Sometimes she gets a little lost in it.”

“I didn’t realise it worked like that,” Becky said, fascinated. “Are you-?”

“No, I’m human,” Carmella cut her off, pulling the neckline of her shirt down to expose a number of bruising bite marks around her neck and chest. “I was Charlotte’s, then Alexa’s, now I’m Sasha’s, but I’m on a break. She drinks a lot, but Charlotte takes care of us, makes sure we rest and recover. Wow, you really are new to this, huh?”

Becky nodded mutely; she hadn’t even considered the way the vampires had adapted their lifestyle. As far as most of humanity was aware, vampires were well and truly thriving on synthetic blood to the extent where those drinking from humans had to be few and far between.

“It’s okay, it’s a bit of a culture shock,” Carmella shrugged. “Charlotte gave me a job when I was new in town, I just learned how stuff works by watching.”

“I-is being eaten a job?” Becky queried hesitantly, gesturing at her neck. She tried not to think about Charlotte covering her in bruises like those, marking her as her own, turning her body into a bouquet of blood roses.

Carmella snorted.

“No, silly. I work in the bar and club, the queens LOVE me, and my act does pretty well on its own time,” Carmella said brightly. “I asked Charlotte to drink from me.”

“Really? Wow, that’s... somethin’,” Becky replied, carefully trying to pick her way through the conversation. She couldn’t imagine offering herself up to somebody like that; Alexa had suggested it as a way for Becky to make some money, but Becky preferred working the bar and had agreed only to let Alexa drink from her if it was absolutely necessary. It was one thing to imagine Charlotte feeding from her, but quite another to actively invite somebody to turn her into their own personal juice box. She was drawn from her reverie when she realised Carmella was talking again.

“It’s not like you imagine,” Carmella said in a low voice, adjusting the pillows around Sasha. “The girls at Alexa’s place do it for cash mostly, or as a sex thing, or just because they believe vampires should have access to consensual blood consumption. I did it because I loved her. Kept doing it after I got over her because it’s pretty fun.”

“Charlotte?” Becky asked.

“Yeah. Everybody falls for her one way or another,” Carmella answered, stretching like a cat as she clambered out of bed. “You will too. I always just assumed it was a vampire thing, but I think it might just be her.”

“We just have good sexual chemistry,” Becky protested as Carmella led her out of the bedroom and along the hallway to a kitchen with sleek marble countertops. Becky briefly wondered what use vampires would have for such a beautiful kitchen, then abruptly remembered how many humans passed through Charlotte’s residence with an uncomfortable jolt.

“Please, Charlotte has good sexual chemistry with literally everything,” Carmella replied with an eye roll as she began to make coffee. “What do you want for breakfast?”

“What’re you havin’?” Becky asked, sitting down at the breakfast bar to watch Carmella cook.

“Pancakes,” Carmella replied cheerfully. “One of Charlotte’s favourites before she turned, she likes when the place smells of them.”

“God, you make her sound so cute,” Becky laughed.

“She is! Once you get to know her,” Carmella said, whisking up batter. “There’s more to her than just a blisteringly attractive vampire queen in leather pants, honey. When you’ve known her as long as I have, you come to realise she’s just a really scary idiot who spends way more time than you’d imagine standing in the kitchen sadly huffing the peanut butter jar because she misses people food.”

Becky had to agree; the short time she’d spent with Charlotte had left her more intrigued than she’d imagined. She had figured a one night stand with a vampire was probably gonna be the most interesting one she’d ever have; she hadn’t expected the vampire to want more than one night. When she’d slept in Charlotte’s bed, millimetres from one of the most lethal predators known to man, she had felt safe; Charlotte’s arms had wrapped around her and drawn her close, her face buried in Becky’s hair as she slept. Becky had admired the muscles in Charlotte’s arms as they had enveloped her, allowing herself to sink into the embrace. It was strange and colder than she’d expected, but Charlotte’s fondness for huge fluffy duvets and blankets ensured her naturally lower body temperature did not make Becky uncomfortable.

“Has she turned lots of people?” Becky asked.

“I’m sure she has in her lifetime,” Carmella shrugged. “But in the time I’ve known her, not really. It’s not something vampires do willy nilly. That’s why everything went down so badly with Alexa.” 

Becky raised her eyebrows with interest as the smell of pancakes began to fill the kitchen. Carmella noticed Becky’s expression and grinned knowingly.

“Charlotte refusing to fill you in on the gossip, huh?” Carmella tutted. “When will she learn that turning things into secrets only makes people more curious?”

“Was it bad?” Becky tried not to sound too interested, gratefully accepting the mug of coffee Carmella slid over to her.

“Oh it was worse than bad,” Carmella said darkly as she began to dish up pancakes. “Charlotte didn’t feed for weeks, she just slept all the time. She only started functioning again because Nattie came and told her to haul her sorry ass out of bed and make some use of her immortality. It was brutal.”

Becky tried to picture Charlotte so broken she couldn’t feed or leave her bed, but wasn’t able to imagine her as anything less than the pinnacle of strength and leadership.

“Nattie?”

“She’s only one around here older than Charlotte, as far as I know,” Carmella explained. “She’s Charlotte’s sire; the one who turned her. Ultimate mommy.”

“Why are there so many women?” Becky asked. “I’ve seen a couple of men at the hotel, but all the vamps I’ve met properly have been women.”

“Women run this town,” Carmella shrugged. “There are men, but most of the vamps here are women. I think all of the vampire houses around here are run by women too, but this is Charlotte’s turf so I don’t see much of ‘em. Plus Charlotte says girls taste better.”

Carmella set down two heaping plates of pancakes, and fetched a variety of condiments from the cupboard. Becky settled on maple syrup almost by default, lost in all the choice; at home, she’d have had them with lemon and sugar. Thinking about home made her stomach twist uncomfortably.

“You okay?” Carmella asked, sensing the shift in Becky’s mood.

“I’m fine, sorry, just... lost in thought is all,” Becky lied. “These are delicious, thank you.”

As they ate, Carmella filled Becky in on the Alexa saga.

“She was human when she came to work here you know,” Carmella said thickly through a mouthful of syrup and pancake. “Charlotte hired her because she needed a waitress for the day shift. We used to do pretty good business for breakfast, and of course there’s always the day drinkers.”

“Why did she turn her if she needed her for day shifts?” Becky asked, perplexed.

“‘Cause Lexi and Charlie did the stupidest thing they could’ve done; they fell in love,” Carmella said dramatically. “She begged Charlotte to turn her because she wanted to be with her forever. That’s a big deal. I assume you’re not so unfamiliar with vamps that you don’t know about the whole immortality thing.”

“So Charlotte turned her?”

“Yep. And it was fine for a while,” Carmella continued. “Then Lexi started to regret it, turned on Charlotte, and went off on her own. The rest is history.”

“Jesus,” Becky blew out a sigh. “That’s intense.”

“It was more complicated than that, but that’s the abridged version,” Carmella shrugged. Becky nodded, continuing to eat her pancakes in silence, Carmella’s words playing over and over in her head. She hadn’t intended to get stuck in some nasty catfight between two vampires who just so happened to also be ex-lovers. If anything, it sounded like a disaster. Becky shivered slightly, wondering what might happen when she got back to the hotel. Would she still have a room? Would she still have a job?  
As Carmella chirped on cheerfully about her act for the evening, Becky tried not to slide into a panic spiral. It seemed that with scarcely a touch, Charlotte had unravelled the precarious life Becky had spent the past few months so carefully cultivating. Carmella seemed to notice Becky’s tension, and pointed at her with her fork.

“Stop stressing out,” she instructed. “Lexi’s gonna be a bitch about it, but that’s all. Don’t worry.”

“Easier said than done,” Becky mumbled, using her fork to shove her food around her plate. “What if I’ve fucked up with them both?”

“Charlotte looks scarier, but Lexi’s meaner,” Carmella explained, collecting their dishes and clearing the table. “But you’ll be fine. They have a whole thing going on, but considering they don’t try to kill each other when they cross paths now, I think we’re finally getting somewhere with the peacemaking.”

“I should probably go back to the hotel,” Becky said slowly, more to herself than Carmella.

“Probably; I can’t say I’ll take responsibility if Sasha wakes up and eats you for breakfast,” Carmella joked. “I’ll show you out. But really, don’t worry about it. You can work with Lexi in a professional context and spend time with Charlotte outside of business hours. There’s no overlap.”

Becky nodded numbly as she followed Carmella out of the kitchen and along the hallway. Becky had to admit, sleeping with somebody for the first time since she’d arrived in America a year ago had reminded her what she’d been missing. Something about the fervent spontaneity of a one night stand has reignited that part of her that longed for fun and adventure. Turning said one night stand into a regular hook up hadn’t really been the plan, but Becky found herself thinking about the next time she might see Charlotte. Perhaps Carmella was right.

“Gimme your phone, I’ll add my number,” Carmella said as they reached the door, Becky complying without hesitation. Regardless of how she felt about Charlotte or Alexa, she’d lived in this town without friends for long enough; finding somebody to hang out with the same day she found somebody to fool around with was better than she could have hoped for.

“Hey Carmella?” Becky said, as Carmella passed her phone back and she stepped across the threshold back into the garden. Even the sunlight seemed to have a salubrious green hue, filtering through the flowers in soft golden dapples. “Thank you for everythin’.”

“Don’t sweat it,” Carmella said, flashing the lazy, easy smile that had made it so easy for Becky to talk to her. “I put my number and Charlotte’s on there. Figured you’d want it.”

Carmella winked, then leaned in to give Becky a quick hug as Becky thanked her and bade her farewell. Trudging away down the alleyway that ran alongside the bar, leaving the garden, and the bright warmth of Carmella, and Charlotte, felt like falling back through the looking glass; even the sun seemed dull in comparison. Becky squared her shoulders and tried to ready herself for Hurricane Alexa, making a poor attempt at keeping her mind off Charlotte as she began the long walk back to her side of town.

 

Alexa stared down the glass of blood with an expression of disgust. Everything about it was tacky; a Bloodier Mary? Made with real blood? Perhaps the most tasteless, and unimaginative, thing she’d ever heard. But the bored looking man on the other side of the bar tutted impatiently, and Alexa remembered she couldn’t afford to be so judgemental. She let out a quiet sigh of frustration as she finished preparing the drink and slid it across the bar; if Becky hadn’t run off after Charlotte like a dog in heat, Alexa wouldn’t be here, serving the unwashed masses. She’d be in her office, though she supposed the hours spent lurking in there flicking scrunched up post-its into the trash were probably equally undignified.   
When Becky had slithered down from her room with an expression of guilt a Labrador would be proud of, Alexa practically threw an apron at her.

“You’re working extra to make up for lost hours yesterday,” Alexa told her stiffly. “No overtime.”

Becky nodded, somewhat cowed by Alexa’s quietly simmering fury, though trying not to smile as Alexa tried to square up to her, her tiny form radiating an energy that Becky could only describe as indicative of a Napoleonic Complex. Becky held Alexa’s gaze, refusing to back off; she could respect Alexa being pissed off, sure, but she wasn’t about to let her push her around.

“Aren’t you brave?” Alexa cooed sarcastically, before shouldering roughly past Becky and leaving the bar, her irritation bubbling over.

 _Wow Lexi, you really fucking liked her. Are we gonna make this mistake again?_ Alexa shook away her accusatory thoughts with a heavy sigh as she let herself into her office. When Becky had first crossed the threshold of the hotel and hesitantly asked Alexa about the bartender position advertised out front, Alexa had felt her heart leap into her mouth; this girl was _gorgeous_. She could feel herself gawping, but didn’t care. It wasn’t often a girl who looked like that, with a cute accent to boot, wandered right into one’s lap. Alexa was an opportunist; she’d hired Becky on the spot. After a few weeks, they’d gotten closer, even friendly; when Alexa had finally swallowed her pride enough to ask Becky on a date, Becky had said “I’d like that”, and smirked at her. That _smirk_. It burned more than any words could, a quiet kind of self satisfaction that drew Alexa to Becky irresistibly, dangerously. Of course, only a few days before their date, Charlotte had to come stomping in -as giant inconveniences are wont to do- and ruin everything.   
To be fair, swooping in and accidentally stealing somebody’s girl was a very Charlotte thing to do, but Alexa was still angry. Why did Charlotte ruin everything? Why did _she_ ruin everything with Charlotte? Why hadn’t Charlotte come back for her? Why had it been Becky in Charlotte’s bed?

“Alexa?” Alexa felt her heart sink as Becky’s soft voice crept under the door. “Can I come in?”

“What do you want?” Alexa demanded rudely, sitting back in her chair with her arms folded peevishly across her chest. Becky evidently took her response as an invitation, as she let herself in, peering round the door apprehensively.

“Didn’t wanna leave stuff weird between us,” said Becky, inching into the room as though afraid Alexa might lunge at her. Alexa was definitely considering it.

“There’s no stuff between us,” Alexa answered curtly. “You’re fine. Go do what I pay you for.”

“I didn’t know she was your, uh... ex,” Becky continued haltingly. “I wouldn’t have gone if I knew, I just- It was just... I’ve just been lonely, wanted to have some fun. Let my hair down. I didn’t mean to hurt you in the process.”

“If Charlotte fucking other women hurt me by now, I’d never get anything done. It’s fine,” Alexa said through gritted teeth. “It’s not that it’s her. It’s that- You know what? Never mind.”

“I know we had a date,” Becky said. “I just figured it was a casual thing, I didn’t think you’d mind-“

“You didn’t think I’d mind being dropped on my ass as soon as you got a better offer?” Alexa interrupted sharply, forgetting her internal resolution not to get into this with Becky.

“No, it wasn’t like that, I just-“ Becky sighed. “It was just sex, it didn’t even mean anythin’. I wasn’t droppin’ you, I wanted to-“

“Have your cake and eat it too?”

“No, I-“ Becky paused, blushing. “I actually really like you. But I thought you weren’t super interested in uh... anythin’ exclusive or uh... emotional. Relationshippy.”

“I asked you on one date sweetheart, nobody said anything about emotions or relationships,” Alexa drawled disdainfully. She gleefully noted that Becky appeared to be at a loss as to how to excuse her behaviour. Though Alexa briefly wondered if Becky needed to excuse her behaviour; was she overreacting? Surely it was rude to agree to a date then go sleep with somebody else, right?

“I dunno,” Becky shrugged. “All I can say is sorry. And for the record, I was lookin’ forward to our date.”

Becky turned on her heel and left Alexa alone with her voice echoing in her ears. Alexa just barely resisted the urge to hurl her phone at the wall after her. She seethed quietly, slumping down onto her desk with a defeated sigh. It was just so like Charlotte to wander in and fuck everything up. Or it was very like herself to ruin her own shot at a good thing; she couldn’t say. With a sigh of resignation, she got to her feet and headed back to the bar. Whoever’s fault it was, she didn’t want to leave things sour between her and Becky.


	4. Chapter 4

They lay tangled on Charlotte’s bed in a Titian sprawl, the velvet of skin against skin, cold, hot, cold again, breathing in soft gasps between every touch. Charlotte was amongst them as some earthbound Venus, all silver and gold, her arms draped lazily over Carmella, who lay in her lap with a smile that promised she’d never keep a secret; Sasha lay on her front, propped up against Charlotte and Carmella’s hips, tracing patterns across the human’s stomach with her fingertips, her eyes distant and dreaming.

“What are you thinking, kitten?” Charlotte asked, gently brushing Sasha’s hair out of her eyes.

“She’s probably hungry,” Carmella quipped, squealing and wriggling into Charlotte’s arms as Sasha pretended to pinch her.

“I’m thinking about Alexa,” Sasha admitted, wincing slightly at the way Charlotte’s posture instantly stiffened at the mention of Alexa’s name.

“Why?” Carmella asked, reaching up to stroke Charlotte’s hair in an effort to soothe her. “Did Becky say anything about what happened when she got back? I asked her to let me know she got home safe, but she didn’t text me like she said she was gonna.”

“It’s not that,” Sasha said, her brows knitting as she concentrated, looking as though she was trying to remember something. “Something’s happened.”

“You almost killed three girls,” Charlotte supplied coldly.

“No, I remember. It just... feels different,” Sasha replied, shaking her head. “Feels like losing the scent.”

“I was afraid this might happen,” Charlotte said after a thoughtful pause, leonine and grand as she stretched expansively and sat up. “Baby Vamps are bad for it.”

“Bad for what?” Carmella inquired, shifting off Charlotte’s lap as Charlotte got up and began to get dressed.

“We’re predators,” Charlotte explained, wriggling into a pair of black jeans. “We’re designed to hunt and to kill. Sometimes if you don’t... finish the job, so to speak, you stay on the scent. Prey drive is very strong in newly turned vampires.”

“Y’all are a lot more like animals than I thought,” Carmella shuddered; sometimes she forgot her life had become the very definition of the phrase ‘playing with fire’. “But why’s that a big deal? Surely it’s good if she’s off the scent, right?”

“No,” Charlotte said with a sad smile. “It means one of those girls has died. We don’t feed on the dead.”

Carmella gasped. Sasha paled, biting her lip with worry.

“What happens now?” she asked in a small voice, looking up at Charlotte with a loss in her eyes that almost made Charlotte feel sorry for her.

“I clean up your mess so your ass, and Alexa’s for that matter, doesn’t get dragged out for a good old sunrise baptism,” Charlotte said grimly. “In a way we got lucky. We know that girl died probably before she did; we’ve got a head start.”

“What do we do?” Carmella wailed, seized by sudden panic as she threw her arms protectively around Sasha. “What’s going to happen to Sasha?”

“Nothing, if we’re smart about this,” Charlotte told her, her tone clipped. She was careful to stay calm, but Carmella could sense her anxiety, and did not miss the slight tremor of her hands as she tapped out a quick text to Alexa. “You and Sasha stay here, and when I say that I mean it. Don’t answer to anybody. If anybody comes in, Sasha knows where to hide.”

Carmella nodded frantically, squeezing Sasha tightly. Sasha remained still, her expression blank.

“Sash,” Charlotte barked, tearing Sasha out of her reverie. “If it comes to it... Call Nattie.”

Sasha nodded resolutely, wrapping her arms around Carmella’s shoulders to comfort her. Sitting naked in Charlotte’s bed with Carmella in her arms, the duvet wrapped about her shoulders, Sasha didn’t feel like a murderer. She didn’t feel like a predator, or a killer, or a vampire. She just felt lost.

 

The expression “between a rock and a hard place” is a hackneyed way of saying one is stuck between two difficult situations. Standing at the reception desk, with a police car pulling into the driveway and Charlotte behind her, Alexa truly understood what it was to be between a rock and a hard place. Alexa wasn’t sure which of the two was Charlotte.

“Alexa, come with me,” Charlotte said calmly. “You know as well as I do, you’ll go down for this, and they won’t wait to hear your side of the story. You’re a vamp and that’s enough.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong!” Alexa hissed, jumping slightly at the sound of a car door slamming “If I run I’ll only look guilty.”

“If you don’t, you’ll end up out there at dawn,” Charlotte continued, taking a cautious step toward Alexa. “I can keep you safe.”

“I’m doing fine on my own,” Alexa answered staunchly, as Becky came running into the room, skidding slightly on the parquet flooring.

“Everybody’s out,” Becky gasped, catching her breath. “Vamps left as soon as Charlotte showed up. Why’d you make me check everybody was gone?What’s happenin’?”

“Hey Becks,” Charlotte said, turning to look Becky up and down appreciatively with an intensity in her eyes that felt almost like hunger. “One of the girls Sasha drank from died.”

She spoke so casually that it took Becky a moment to process what she was saying.

“And they’ll take the first vamp they can get their hands, whether it’s the one who did it or not,” Alexa added. “Charlotte’s right. Let’s get out of here.”

“Where will we go?” Becky asked, as Alexa followed Charlotte out of the foyer and into one of the maze like corridors that crisscrossed the hotel like spiderwebs.

“The Garden,” Charlotte replied, ushering them along the hallway toward the fire exit. It took Becky a moment to realise Charlotte was referring to her place; she hadn’t managed to catch the name the night she visited, but Alexa had informed her it was called The Garden Of Earthly Delights with an eyeroll so contemptuous Becky had felt it. It wasn’t every day one met a vampire who ran a drag bar named after the work of Hieronymus Bosch, but Charlotte in herself was a tangled assortment of improbabilities arranged into a woman, and Becky was quickly learning to accept that fact. Slinking out the back door and picking their way across the grounds at the back of the hotel whilst the rest of Alexa’s human staff dealt with the police investigation suddenly sprung onto them felt almost cowardly, but Becky reminded herself that the police would not have waited to find out that Alexa hadn’t killed the girl herself.

“I can’t believe I’m listening to you,” Alexa huffed, staunchly ignoring Charlotte’s extended hand of assistance as she attempted to climb the wall at the end of the gardens.

“Neither can I,” Charlotte replied drily, letting her arm fall to her side and instead settling for watching Alexa’s tiny frame struggle up the wall as she sat atop, nonchalant as a cat. Becky gently pushed Alexa up just high enough for her to get a handhold on the top of the wall and scramble up, though she didn’t acknowledge that Becky had helped. Becky hurriedly scurried over herself, dropping with a hard thud on the other side as Charlotte led them through the dark toward her waiting car. As if on autopilot, Alexa went to the passenger seat, leaving Becky to sit in the back as Charlotte drove.

“Now so long as nobody saw us leave,” Charlotte said, fiddling with the radio. “We should be able to get home in peace.”

Becky sank back into her seat, trying to let her brain process what the hell she’d ended up embroiled in. Whatever it was, it was a mess, and Becky began to understand why Alexa had told her that Charlotte brought trouble everywhere she went.

 

Charlotte had made her home in the winding network of apartments above The Garden in much the same way Alexa had established herself in the penthouse of the hotel, however Charlotte’s living situation seemed far less orderly. If Becky didn’t know better, she might have sworn the rooms shifted as time passed, for every corner seemed to round to a new set of rooms she hadn’t seen before.

“You can stay here for as long as this takes to blow over,” Charlotte told them, gesturing for them to climb the stairs. “Carmella will take good care of you.”

“Carmella’s still here?” Alexa said, her voice sounding almost hopeful.

“Yes,” Charlotte replied, a slight smile hidden in the corners of her mouth. “She’ll be happy to see you.”

As if on cue, Carmella appeared to let them in, and ushered them into the kitchen where she was making coffee. Sasha was sitting at the table with her arms folded, resting her chin on her forearms and gazing into the middle distance.

“I can’t believe I’m back here,” Alexa said with a sigh, sitting down at the table and assuming a posture that matched Sasha’s.

“Think of it as a vacation!” Carmella advised brightly, setting a cup of coffee down in front of her. Of course Carmella remembered how she took her coffee; almond milk, two Splendas.

“Sasha’s as much your fault as she is mine, Lexi,” Charlotte reminded her, though she smiled reassuringly at Sasha despite her harsh tone. “We both have to pick up the pieces.”

“It’s like having divorced parents,” Sasha told Becky wearily.

“Wait-“ Becky began, nonplussed, but Carmella waved away her question.

“It’s best if you don’t ask,” Carmella said in an undertone. “Bit of a sore spot.”

Sasha nodded in agreement, casting a sidelong glance at Alexa and Charlotte who had started bickering almost immediately upon crossing the threshold of Charlotte’s home.

“We have a whole night of this ahead of us,” groaned Carmella. “Hey Becks, you hungry?”

At Carmella’s question, Becky realised she hadn’t eaten since midday and was absolutely ravenous as a result. She nodded, and Carmella immediately set about preparing something to eat. Becky glanced back at Charlotte and Alexa, finding herself shrinking back slightly; they had an almost electric frisson between them that seemed to sting and spark everything it could reach.

“Speaking of hungry,” Sasha said pointedly, over Charlotte and Alexa’s niggling jabs at each other. “Charlotte hasn’t eaten for three days.”

A hush fell over the kitchen as though Sasha had just announced somebody had died.

“Charlotte...” Alexa started softly. “If I’d known it was that bad I would’ve let you come to mine. You know I always would.”

“Wait, what’s happenin’? Why is this bad? I thought you guys fed like, once a month or somethin’,” Becky asked, at a loss as she looked between Charlotte, Sasha and Alexa’s faces for an explanation.

“No honey,” Carmella said, looking up from the onion she was dicing to look at Becky with something almost like pity. “If a vampire doesn’t eat for three days, they go into a state of hibernation, and the longer you wait, the harder it gets to wake them up.”

“To cut a long story short,” Alexa said. “Charlotte’s an idiot who needs to eat something otherwise she’s going to be absolutely useless.”

“It’s hard to feed as often as I need to,” Charlotte explained with a shrug. “I’d rather not leave a trail of bodies in my wake that leads right to my front door. The supply of people willing to let a vamp feed from them isn’t terribly high, and I want my girls to eat first. I can always hunt if it comes to it.”

“So what happens now?” Becky asked, intrigued.

“We find somebody,” Sasha said. “I fed from Carmella today, so she can’t help. We need somebody fresh. Charlotte won’t drink the synthetic stuff, either.”

Charlotte simple sat between them, looking vaguely amused as everybody discussed her fate.

“You are aware I’m perfectly capable of dealing with this myself, right?” Charlotte told them, rapping her stiletto-tipped fingernails against the table with a quiet irritation that seemed all the more dangerous for its subtlety.

“Look what happened last time you went out hunting,” Carmella said reproachfully. “You couldn’t stop.”

“What about Becky?” Sasha said suddenly. “You guys have already been there, done that, right? Seems like a pretty obvious solution to me.”

“I didn’t actually feed that night,” Charlotte said delicately, her cheeks pinking slightly under the combined scrutiny of Sasha, Alexa and Carmella.

“I mean there’s also the whole ‘don’t volunteer people as a snack without their consent’ thing to consider,” Carmella added, turning to Becky who seemed unfazed.

“Sure,” she said blithely. “I’ll take one for the team. Can’t be that bad, right?”

Becky tried to remain blasé, but she could not keep her mind from wandering to the thoughts she’d had of Charlotte feeding from her the night they’d spent together. Alexa looked mutinous.

“Relax Lexi,” Carmella said, putting her hand on Alexa’s arm. “It’s not like Charlotte’s going to hurt her much, or take a lot.”

“Yeah, and anyway they’ve already fu-“ Sasha began before Charlotte silenced her with a look.

“I didn’t realise dinner was such a big commitment around here,” Becky remarked, raising an eyebrow and flashing Charlotte a smirk that made her breath catch in her throat.

“You know what? If you don’t mind, it’d make my life a hell of a lot easier,” Charlotte admitted. Alexa seethed quietly beside her, but Charlotte refused to acknowledge her; she didn’t own Becky. She’d essentially offered her up to Charlotte on a silver platter, and she didn’t even drink real blood anyway. At least, that was what Charlotte told herself as Becky nodded and shrugged out of her leather jacket.

“Where do you want me?” Becky asked, swinging her arms awkwardly as everybody in the room scrutinised her with an intensity that made her wish she’d kept her jacket on.

“It might be better to go into another room,” Charlotte said carefully. “Give us some privacy.”

“I don’t mind,” Becky replied, though she felt herself almost choke on her words as Charlotte leaned in close.

“I’m a messy eater,” she whispered, letting her lips graze Becky’s jawline as she did so. Becky swallowed and nodded, speechless as Charlotte led her out of the kitchen. Becky followed Charlotte to her bedroom, feeling a strange jolt in the pit of her stomach as she recalled her last visit to Charlotte’s bed. As she sat on the edge of the bed, Charlotte studied her, pacing around the room with an almost feline disquiet.

“Are you sure about this?” Charlotte asked. “You know, when Alexa called you a virgin before, she meant you’d never been drank from. It can do strange things to a first timer. Make you dizzy, sleepy, all sorts of side effects.”

“That’s okay, I’ll sleep it off,” Becky shrugged. “Carmella seems to cope okay.”

“Carmella’s a trooper,” Charlotte said with a hint of a smile. “And an old hand. She’s used to this.”

“So uh... what do I do?” Becky asked, shifting uneasily. “Where do you... bite me?”

“That depends,” Charlotte said. “We can be traditional; I can do neck. If you’re nervous, wrist is fine. If you want to be able to hide it... inner thigh. Neck is usually a little easier because it means I can react right away if you faint, but it’s up to you.”

“Neck it is,” Becky replied, flipping her hair over her shoulder. Charlotte nodded, and with a frighteningly quiet agility, moved to sit behind Becky in such a way that Becky was sat between her legs. Becky tried to ignore the soft push of Charlotte’s breasts against her back as she gently tilted Becky’s head to the side and leaned in. Becky closed her eyes.


	5. Chapter 5

The poppies were red. Was this what dying felt like? Or was she falling asleep, Dorothy sinking to her knees in the glorious Technicolor of the poppy fields? Charlotte had held her, and she had winced at the first wound where Charlotte had carefully pierced her with her fangs, pulling back to watch the blood bead above Becky’s skin.

“I’ll be gentle,” Charlotte had whispered, and she was. Her bite was barely a bite, just enough to draw blood. She didn’t feed from her voraciously; she held her upright in her arms and lapped at her so gently, Becky leaned into it as if it were a kiss.

“It’s okay,” Becky had murmured, trembling in Charlotte’s arms. “You can take more.”

“Are you sure?” Charlotte asked, pausing. Becky watched a narrow stripe of blood crawl down her chest and blossom into a stain on the fabric of her tank top. Becky raised her fingers to swipe away the droplets of blood running in bright rivulets down her front, before turning to look at Charlotte directly. She extended her hand, her fingertips brushing Charlotte’s lips.

“I’m sure,” Becky told her decisively, sliding her fingers into Charlotte’s mouth, her blood smudging on Charlotte’s chin. As Charlotte licked the blood from her with a strange, hungry fire, Becky let herself give in to the soft moan building in her chest, and clambered into Charlotte’s lap, straddling her. Charlotte’s hands moved almost instinctively to her hips, pulling Becky close. She looked to Becky for confirmation, strange and frightening and beautiful, bloodied and dark eyed, her fangs seeming very white in the half light.

“I’m sure,” Becky repeated, and Charlotte nodded, reaching up to tangle one hand in Becky’s hair and pull her into an embrace. The moment Charlotte’s body met hers, Becky cried out at the sudden wild pain where Charlotte had sunk her fangs into her, the alien pressure of Charlotte suckling at her neck, the strange, delirious rush of feeling her own life run from her body into Charlotte’s like a macabre river overflowing with meltwater. Almost before she was aware of it, Becky felt the swell of orgasm swallow her, Charlotte’s thigh pressing hard against her as she rode out her peak with Charlotte’s name spilling from her lips like a prayer, Charlotte’s hands sliding up the inside of her shirt to wander up the delicate staircase of her spine, to play the harp strings of her ribs, to paint Charlotte’s fingerprints across her skin like a claim to her body. Her blood ran freely to splatter the sheets as she broke Charlotte’s contact with her, a dizzy sense of wrongness consuming her as she became very primally aware that seeing so much blood meant injury. As Charlotte growled softly and pulled her back in to resume feeding, Becky went limp in her arms, the hazy afterglow flooding her with a strange sense of peace despite her body’s insistence that something was horribly wrong. She was literally in the jaws of one of the greatest predators the world had ever seen, and yet she embraced her with a sleepy adoration, letting out a contented gasp of Charlotte’s name as she broke the seal of her lips over the bite on Becky’s neck. With an ease that Becky might’ve found terrifying if she hadn’t just had one of the strangest experiences of her life, Charlotte picked her up and laid her flat in the bed, the splatters of her blood slowly spreading across the sheets. Within moments, Charlotte was back at her side holding a compress over the bite, blood still dripping from her chin onto her chest.

“You are a messy eater,” Becky acknowledged dreamily. The poppies were red. Charlotte’s lips were red. All the world seemed the colour of Becky’s insides. It was beautiful and strange.

“You’re a messy meal,” Charlotte replied in a whisper, bending to kiss Becky’s forehead. “Thank you. You did well, too. Rest for now though.”

“Charlotte?” Becky asked in a small voice as Charlotte pulled the blankets over her and made sure she was comfortable.

“What is it?”

“Is it normal to-?” Becky paused to blush, though she held eye contact with Charlotte almost defiantly. “...to like it?”

“More normal than you’d think,” Charlotte reassured her, before leaning in close with a smirk. “Don’t worry, I liked it too.”

Becky nodded, flushing furiously as Charlotte grazed a metallic kiss across her lips before leaving the room. Becky let herself doze, her hand rising to cradle the bruises Charlotte had left by her collarbone. Whatever she had expected from being bitten, it wasn’t... well, that. She rolled over in bed, her fingertips still ghosting against the purple ache of her neck, glistening slightly as it bled, slick where Charlotte’s mouth had touched her. Becky wriggled slightly further under the blankets, letting her eyes slide closed; Charlotte was right, it was tiring. But, Becky reasoned to herself, if it felt like that every time, Becky would gladly deal with the exhaustion.

 

Alexa’s small hands balled into fists against the tabletop as Charlotte strode back into the kitchen, still bloody, unabashed.

“I can’t fucking believe you,” Alexa said witheringly, her lip curling in a disgusted sneer. Carmella and Sasha exchanged a look before quietly excusing themselves, no doubt to hide in Carmella’s room playing Smash Bros Melee rather than watch Charlotte and Alexa go for each other’s throats.

“Oh yes, I forgot you managed to become a vampire and totally miss the memo about the whole drinking blood part,” Charlotte replied, her voice dripping with contempt. She bent down and kissed Alexa with such aggression that she could barely react, though she shivered pleasantly at the taste of Becky’s blood in Charlotte’s mouth, parting her lips to let Charlotte deepen the kiss as she wrapped her arms around Charlotte’s shoulders. For a moment, she forgot; she forgot that Charlotte had stolen every Summer the world owed her, every morning waking up with somebody she loved, everybody she knew, the entire life she lived before. She forgot that she’d told Charlotte she never wanted to see her again. She forgot that they broke up and fled to opposite sides of the city in a violent melancholy.

Most of all, she’d forgotten what a good kisser Charlotte was.

“Miss me?” Charlotte breathed as she pulled away, pausing to quirk an eyebrow questioningly at Alexa, who smiled sweetly before drawing her arm back and slapping her so hard across the face she staggered.

“Don’t you dare kiss me without my consent ever again,” Alexa said icily. “Fuckyou, Charlotte. Your games don’t do it for me any more. You wanna play games? Go sit next door with the two overgrown brats you’ve managed to manipulate into loving you.”

“I’ll do that,” Charlotte replied silkily, though there was a dark, quiet anger in her eyes. “Why don’t you go see how your girlfrien- Oh, my mistake, she wasn’t that into you; your ‘crush’ is doing? I drank a lot, but she loved it so much she might just be willing to let you have a go too.”

With that, Charlotte stalked out of the room, leaving Alexa angry and alone in a house she used to call home.


	6. Chapter 6

Dawn climbed through the windows in long golden shafts, lancing into the room as a bright declaration of day that seemed almost offensive given the other residents of Charlotte’s Garden. Becky,however, relished the sight of sunlight; she hadn’t quite realised until she was bathed in it, but in the last few days, she’d barely seen the morning sun at all. She supposed it was a side effect of befriending a group of people where vampires outnumbered the humans; nights unwound in great shimmering coils of adventure, story telling, kisses, blood, booze. Mornings hid behind a veil of sleep, lost hours. The Garden Of Earthly Delights seemed so far removed from the humdrum grey of the outside world that Becky almost forgot why she was there in the first place. Even Alexa had relaxed a little, though she still couldn’t talk to Charlotte without taking on a pointed tone. Becky started working the bar, enjoying the change in clientele from the hotel, and the ability to watch the drag and burlesque performances whilst she worked. It felt like every night, she made a new friend, human or vampire, and went to bed with a smile. Charlotte, however, had not fed from her again, nor even mentioned her encounter with Becky, much to Becky’s chagrin. Privately, she’d hoped it might happen again, though outwardly she pretended to be entirely unaffected. Carmella helped her care for the bite - “it’s not like on TV, they don’t magically heal up because of superpowered saliva or anything, it’s a real wound,” - andSasha had entertained her with stories about all the different ways the people she’d bitten had reacted. Even Alexa had made a brief mention of the event; it seemed that only Charlotte was unwilling to acknowledge the moment they had together, and no matter how Becky tried to approach it, she seemed able to deftly redirect the conversation until Becky realised she hadn’t managed to say what she wanted to say at all. The next time Charlotte had to feed, she’d gone out hunting and come back bloodied and stormy-faced, and had hissed like an enormous cat at Carmella when she tried to tend to her wounds. As Charlotte seemed to drift, Alexa had quietly taken to spending more time in Becky’s company, for which Becky was grateful; she’d come to appreciate the nights spent in an easy silence with each other, a strangely intimate quiet where neither felt the need to speak. Becky rolled over in bed, reaching out to check her phone as she mused on Charlotte’s sudden reluctance to engage with her.   
_It shouldn’t hurt that she’s keeping her distance, you’ve barely known her for two weeks,_ Becky told herself as she scrolled through instagram, pausing to comment an unreasonable number of heart emojis on Carmella’s latest selfie. Just give her some space.  
Thinking of Carmella, Becky slipped out of bed and pulled on a pair of sweatpants, heading through to the kitchen; she decided that for once, she was gonna make breakfast. Carmella was usually the first one up, but today Becky had beaten her to it, and was feeling rather smug as she arranged all the necessary ingredients for French toast and began to cook.  
Carmella wandered in, yawning expansively, just as Becky was preparing to dish up the mountain of food she had made.

“You’re a saint,” Carmella groaned, sliding into a seat at the breakfast bar as Becky set a heaping portion of French toast down in front of her.

“Figured I’d return the favour; you make me breakfast every day,” Becky replied with a grin. “It was gettin’ ridiculous.”

“I always make myself breakfast because I’m usually here by myself during the day,” Carmella shrugged. “Now that Bayley’s gone, and Ruby’s gone to make her own territory, and Paige belongs to Nattie-“

Carmella paused, realising Becky had no idea who she was talking about.

“Do a lot of girls pass through here?” Becky asked, chasing a strawberry around her plate with her fork. Carmella looked thoughtful.

“Yes and no. Some people come for a bit and help Charlotte out in return for staying here, then once they’ve figured out what they’re doing, they move on. Some folks just... can’t move on,” Carmella said softly. “Because they get to used to living for the night. Somebody usually turns them eventually, then they either get stupid and wind up out at sunrise or they move on to make their own territory. Charlotte doesn’t turn people often, so those people usually don’t stay long.”

Becky nodded slowly, intrigued. This whole vampire thing was way more complicated than she thought.

“So everybody has their own territory?” Becky asked around a mouthful of fruit and French toast.

“Not so much everybody. Most of this place belongs to Charlotte,” Carmella explained. “She used to have a lot more, was even something like a queen, but after everything with Lexi she divided up all her territory amongst her progeny and other Vampire houses around here. Now she just sticks to her own patch.”

Becky wondered how many people Charlotte had turned as Carmella went to make a fresh pot of coffee. Surely there had to be more than Alexa and Sasha, right? As Becky thought about it, she realised she wasn’t actually sure how the process of being turned worked; she could vaguely remember the scaremongering educational videos they showed at school back home warning about the dangers of consuming vampire blood, but it felt like it had to be more complicated than that.

“You look very contemplative,” Carmella remarked with a smile.

“Mella, how does being turned work?” Becky asked curiously, leaning forward to rest her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands. For a moment, to Carmella, she seemed almost childlike; caught up between forces more powerful than she could possibly hope to understand, and yet blissfully unaware of it. As she tidied up their plates, Carmella shrugged.

“It’s quite an... intimate process. I’ve never seen it done, but I have a vague idea,” she replied. “You and the vamp have to drink from each other at the same time. They used to say you could just drink vamp blood and turn yourself that way, but it doesn’t really work like that.”

Becky nodded in a thoughtful silence. It sounded like being turned was way more complicated than she’d initially been led to believe.

“If you’re looking for somebody to turn you,” Carmella said, with a strange sort of forced, casual tone. “You won’t find one here. Charlotte won’t let anybody turn you.”

“No, I was just curious,” Becky said quickly, her hand automatically drifting to the healing wound on her shoulder, the dainty crescent of Charlotte’s smile imprinted on her in a constellation of petechia.

“Hey Becky?”

“What?” Becky replied, instantly wary as Carmella sat down across from her as though she was about to give her some kind of ‘Talk’, the kind that definitely started with a capital T.

“Alexa... really likes you. You should give her a chance,” Carmella began carefully. “I know you’re currently on that ‘Charlotte-paid-attention-to-me’ high, because I was like that too. But don’t get lost in it.”

Becky balked, suddenly feeling intensely scrutinised.

“Sorry to be a bitch, but this doesn’t really have anythin’ to do with anybody but me, Charlotte and Alexa,” Becky replied uncomfortably. Carmella simply smiled at her.

“Becky, I’ve been where you are before. Stop waiting around for Charlotte to bite you again, and don’t miss out on somebody who really, really likes you,” Carmella advised, before turning and leaving Becky standing alone in the kitchen. Becky let out of a soft sigh and sank back into her seat. The sooner this whole thing blew over and everything could go back to how it was before, the better.

 

The newspaper hit the table with a loud thud, taking both Becky and Sasha by surprise in the middle of their game of Super Smash Bros Melee on Sasha’s rather decrepit GameCube.

“They found the body,” Charlotte muttered, more to Sasha than anybody else. The front page showed a stretch of riverbank dotted with police and striped in yellow tape.

“The what now?” Becky asked, looking between Sasha and Charlotte and suddenly feeling very vulnerable. Women bursting into the room yelling about people finding corpses generally didn’t bode well, as far as Becky knew.

“Charlotte drank too much and the girl died,” Sasha answered, without taking her eyes off Charlotte. “The night we met you. We put her in the river.”

Becky felt a peculiar cold sensation flood the pit of her stomach. That night Charlotte had taken her to bed, the night she’d given herself up to kisses and wandering hands and soft gasps and desperate whispers in the dark; it was strange to think that only a few hours before, Charlotte had killed somebody. It felt surreal, a bizarre joke, a combination of words that must have come out wrong. Becky felt panic rise in her throat, her chest sizzling and crackling with bright copper sparks of fear.

“It was an accident,” Charlotte said quietly.

“Would it have been me if it hadn’t been her first?” Becky asked in a strangely high pitched voice, irate in her panic. Charlotte ignored the acerbic bite of her words; frightened people do stupid things, like assume they were inches from death when they’d never been within miles of it.

“No,” Charlotte replied calmly. “I never intended to feed from you.”

Becky opened her mouth to reply, then paused; Charlotte was right, and when she had fed from her, she had appeared totally in control. She felt some of her anxious fear begin to subside, though her eyes still darted between Sasha and Charlotte suspiciously.

“Not only that,” Charlotte continued, talking directly to Sasha once again as she pointed at another front page story. “They found another two bodies, one in an apartment in town, one in the woods. And they’re definitely not ours.”

“Fuck,” Sasha said quietly, looking up at Charlotte and biting her lip. “What happens now?”

“What’s that, four deaths in the space of two weeks?” Alexa said, setting her book down on the arm of the couch. “Maybe more. It just got a whole lot tougher to be a vampire in this town.”

“Not only that,” Charlotte continued. “But the two other bodies were found ‘within hours of each other, with very similar wounds’; somebody was hungry.”

“A baby vamp?” Alexa asked.

“Almost definitely. And whoever turned her, or him, isn’t keeping an eye on their damn kids,” Charlotte said acidly, pushing her hair out of her face as she tried to piece together the situation.

“We’re gonna have to deal with this, aren’t we?” Alexa said wearily.

“If we don’t want cops at our door,” Charlotte replied. “Yes.”

With a heavy sigh, Alexa got up and followed Charlotte through to the kitchen, newspaper in hand.

“Family meeting?” Becky joked, and Sasha nodded grimly.

“You know how I got turned?” Sasha asked quietly. Becky shook her head; she didn’t know much about young vampires, besides what Carmella and Charlotte had told her. Sasha turned off their video game, settling in cross legged on the couch.

“Charlotte, Alexa and I, we had a history,” Sasha began. “Charlotte knew I was good with the whole being bitten thing, so she brought me to Alexa to be her very first. Thing is, Alexa drank too much and panicked. To keep me from dying, she tried to turn me, but she couldn’t do it properly. Charlotte had to finish the job.”

“Jesus,” Becky said quietly. That explained Alexa and Charlotte’s overprotective attitude toward Sasha.

“To turn somebody,” Sasha continued. “You, the vampire I mean, you have to get them to drink from you at the same time as you feed from them. You share each other’s blood. It’s a big deal. But I was passing out by the time Alexa noticed she’d taken too much, and she couldn’t get me to drink enough of her blood to turn because she was freaking out so badly. Charlotte had to finish the job.”

“How did she do it?” Becky asked, intrigued.

“She bit herself, deep, and held me like a baby, made me take it,” Sasha shrugged. “I can remember her telling me not to dare die before she bit me. I can remember how it tasted, like fire going down my throat, and feeling the heat spread through all my bones to the tips of my fingers. But they didn’t think it’d work, because I had two different sets of vampire blood in me, and Charlotte didn’t know anybody that had happened to before.”

“But you turned out just fine,” Charlotte finished for her, leaning in the doorway with her arms crossed, Alexa at her side. “And we’re very proud of you.”

“And we’re gonna need you to help us find this new baby out terrorising the town,” Alexa added. “Figure out where they’re hunting, maybe try and talk to them. The kid will probably be scared.”

“It’s a vampire, not a stray dog,” Becky said incredulously. “Sure they know what they’re doing is a bad idea?”

“Nah,” Sasha shook her head. “When you first turn, it can take a while for the humanity to come back and the predatory instincts to settle. They’ll be confused and hungry, and that’s a dangerous combo.”

“So what now? We catch it?”

“ _Them_ ,” Charlotte corrected sharply. “And yes. We’ll try to reach them, and bring them here until we can find out who the hell turned them and left them wandering by themselves.”

“I’m in,” Becky said with a shrug, and the vampires exchanged glances. “What? It’s not like you won’t need bait, right?”

“That’s... actually a very good point,” Charlotte conceded. “And we’ll be nearby to protect you. If you’re willing to take the risk, we might just get this done in a night.”

“You know me,” Becky shrugged, flashing the wound on her neck. “I’d never say no to taking a risk.”


	7. Chapter 7

There are moments in life that feel so surreal, one cannot help but be bowled over by the reality of the situation, even to the detriment of one’s appreciation for the circumstances they have found themselves in. As Becky trudged over the buckling concrete of the sidewalk, trying not to look too hard at the yawning, paneless windows of the abandoned warehouse to her right, she found herself trying to make sense of how she had ended up there. The blank gape of the great, unshuttered loading bay of the warehouse seemed to yawn as the wind breathed through the grimy lungs of the mouldering building, sending tiny eddies of ancient dust scurrying in the wake of Becky’s footsteps, seeming almost to suck her in. She couldn’t hear or see Alexa, but she knew instinctively she was there, prowling out of sight, downwind so as not to alert their prey to her presence. They’d found the baby’s hiding place relatively quickly; Sasha had caught the scent of vampire blood right away, and they followed it to the warehouse on the outskirts of town.

“Must have gotten hurt in a scuffle,” Charlotte had said. “Maybe tried to take on a well-prepared human who caught her good and scared her off.”

“How do you know it’s a her?” Becky had asked, dumbfounded. Charlotte had merely tapped her nose. Charlotte and Sasha hung back, out of sight and scenting distance, but close enough to help should it be required. Sasha had explained that, as Alexa had been drinking artificial blood for so long, she had a far less potent scent than herself or Charlotte and thus would be much harder for their quarry to pick up on. Despite all these protective measures, Becky still felt uncertain; she had volunteered herself as bait before Charlotte had explained just how they’d figured out the killer was a newly turned vampire. According to the newspaper, she hadn’t just drained her victims of their blood; in her fervour, she had ripped their throats out. Becky paused, trying to surreptitiously scan the horizon for any indication of her companions. As Charlotte had instructed, she clumsily released the blade of the flick knife and slashed it across her palm, watching with slightly dizzy fascination as her flesh parted and flourished in a sudden fount of red.   
Charlotte drew a long, shuddering breath as the scent of blood hit her; Sasha almost started forward before remembering herself; Alexa froze where she stood, mid-step, the hairs on her arms standing on end. Charlotte was right; Becky was good bait.   
It happened almost before Becky could register the force of being thrown to the ground, a flurry of pink barrelling into her with such aggression that she felt her arm break on impact. There was the barest brush of fangs at her throat, before her assailant was hauled off her. She barely had the chance to catch her breath before she felt Charlotte bodily pick her up, very careful not to disturb her arm, and carry her into the shadowy doorway of the warehouse. Becky watched as Alexa and the baby vampire scrapped like wild animals, hissing at each other like swans, exchanging blows with an almost frenetic energy. Sasha tackled her from the side, and Alexa leaped atop her to pin her down, the baby vampire spitting and fighting with a violence bordering on lunacy. She got in a few good bites and punches before finally submitting to Alexa and Sasha’s grip, taking in great, furious gasping breaths. Charlotte indicated for them to let the vampire go, and got to her feet, moving to crouch down beside the pink-haired girl, who glared at her mutinously.

“What’s your name?” Charlotte asked, as Alexa rushed to Becky’s side to examine her arm.

“Liv,” the vampire replied, tilting her chin defiantly, her blue eyes full of a fierce resentment.

“When’d you turn?” Sasha asked.

“Three days ago,” Liv replied, seeming to blaze. Her bravado instantly vanished as Charlotte grabbed her arm and wrenched it outward, snapping the girl’s forearm across her knee as though it was nothing. The girl shrieked in agony, rolling over to cradle her arm and sobbing, the sounds of her pain ringing in Becky’s skull. Becky turned away from Alexa to vomit.

“Don’t worry,” Alexa whispered, stroking her hair. “We heal far faster than you, her arm will be fine in ten minutes.”

“You broke Becky’s arm,” Charlotte said conversationally. Liv howled something that could have been an apology. “What idiot turned you and left you to your own devices?”

“They took her away,” Liv whimpered. “We were together, then they took her away.”

“Who took her away?” Charlotte demanded, reaching out to turn Liv’s face toward her. Liv looked up at her, sniffling, her blue eyes full of fat, almost cartoonish, tears.

“They took Ruby,” Liv replied. “The vamp hunters, they took Ruby.”

 

Carmella looked Liv up and down, horrified.

“She’s been ripping people’s throats out and you want me to look after her?” she asked incredulously, her hand fluttering to her neck as though terrified her own throat was next on Liv’s list.

“She didn’t mean it,” Sasha said in what she clearly imagined was a reassuring tone. “She’s just a baby.”

Liv beamed at Carmella, nodding along in agreement with Sasha’s words.

“I didn’t mean it,” Liv repeated, and Carmella looked away with a shiver, uncomfortable with her strange, angelic innocence coupled with her fangs and bloodstained clothes.

“Hang on,” Carmella said suddenly, reaching out to touch the thick leather choker around Liv’s neck, the remaining few links of broken chain jingling as she did so. “Why is she wearing a collar?”

“Sarah tried to keep me from getting out after they took Ruby away,” Liv said blandly, walking past Carmella and immediately rummaging in the fridge.   
Alexa had taken Becky to the hospital to have her arm treated; Charlotte had immediately departed to try and find a lead on what, exactly, had happened to Ruby. Sasha had been left with the newest addition to their party, under the assumption that she and Carmella would be more than equipped to handle her. Within two minutes of getting her in the door, Liv had bitten Sasha, stuck her elbow through the hallway wall, and hissed at Carmella with such fervour that Carmella had screamed and locked herself in the bathroom until Sasha had managed to coax her back out.

“Keeping her chained up probably isn’t such a bad idea,” Carmella scowled, eyeing Liv with suspicion as she deposited the contents of the fridge on the floor, looking for food. Eventually she found what she was looking for; Charlotte’s stash of donor blood. She grabbed a pouch and pierced a hole with her fang, sucking out the blood like it was some kind of macabre Capri Sun. Content with her snack, she wandered away, leaving the fridge door wide open and the debris scattered across the floor.

“I’m gonna take her next door and play some video games with her until Charlotte gets back,” Sasha said brightly, clearly delighted at having a new companion, and at no longer being the baby of the group.

“I didn’t sign up for this!” Carmella yelled after her as Sasha flounced out of the kitchen. There was no response; she could only tut as she set about cleaning up the mess Liv had already managed to bring into her life.


	8. Chapter 8

“I don’t care if it was heat of the moment,” Alexa was saying quietly. “She’s just a kid, you broke her fucking arm. You’d never have done something like that before. Never. In fact, you never would’ve even considered volunteering Becky as bait before. What the fuck happened to you, Charlotte?”

“You don’t get to tell me what I would and wouldn’t do,” Charlotte snapped, folding her arms across her chest. “And I could ask you the same question; don’t tell me you’ve gone soft? Anyway, now isn’t the time for this conversation. I wanted to see how Becky is.”

“Becky’s fine, no thanks to you,” Alexa replied sourly, before noticing Becky sitting up in bed.

“Arm,” Becky said stupidly, lifting her arm. It had been neatly set in a fluorescent pink cast. Becky guessed Alexa had picked the colour.

“Arm,” Alexa agreed.

“Yeah Bex, you broke your arm,” Charlotte said gently, moving to sit on the edge of Becky’s bed, trying to ignore Alexa rolling her eyes with exaggerated disdain. “It’s okay though.”

“You passed out, but the doctor said as soon as you wake up, we can get going,” Alexa clarified, as Becky looked mildly confused as to why breaking her arm had necessitated any time spent in a hospital bed. Becky simply nodded along as Alexa made arrangements to have her discharged.

“Wonder what state The Garden’s gonna be in when we get back,” Charlotte mused.

“With taste like yours, any kind of destruction will be an improvement,” Alexa said sweetly. _Not_ _so_ _soft_ _after_ _all_ , Charlotte smiled to herself as Alexa explained to Becky what had happened with Liv.

“Any updates on Ruby?” Alexa asked, turning to look at Charlotte.

“Nothing,” Charlotte said grimly. “No spoor, no signs she was ever even here, besides Liv. It’s like she’s vanished.”

“We need to find Sarah,” Alexa replied. “She’ll know. And she’ll know what the hell Ruby was doing back here in the first place.”

“That’s a good point,” Charlotte admitted, furrowing her brow; Ruby had gone off to find her own territory, and as far as Charlotte had been aware, had quite a successful adventure. The last Charlotte had heard, Ruby had won territory from some no-name vamp in the middle of a city, and was thriving on the steady stream of prey her environment had afforded her. What would have brought her back to the old turf, where it was overcrowded enough as it was, and Charlotte guarded the land jealously like an ill-tempered dog?

“Vampire hunters,” Becky said suddenly. “She said somethin’ about vampire hunters. Maybe they chased ‘em here.”

“Ruby would know better than to lead them back here, surely?” Alexa interjected, looking to Charlotte for an explanation.

“She might have needed our help,” Charlotte answered slowly. “Or she might have been trying to warn us.”

The three women exchanged a dark look; even Becky, who had stumbled into the vampire contingent of society mere weeks previously, was familiar with the subset of humanity that had taken it upon themselves to try and hunt vampires to extinction. Sometimes, she’d see them on the news, preaching blood purity and scattering useless holy water. However, the most dangerous ones were the ones you didn’t hear about at all; the hunters who swept in, exterminated the vampire population and moved on, without causing a stir or even alerting the human residents of the area that a microcosmic war was being waged on their front doorstep. The tense silence between them as they made their way out of the hospital did not break until they reached Charlotte’s car.

“Do you think Ruby’s okay?” Alexa said eventually, as Charlotte helped Becky fasten her seatbelt. Charlotte paused for a long moment, allowing Alexa’s question to hang between them like smoke, quivering, unpleasant.

“If you’re asking if I think, wherever she is, she’s alright? The honest answer is no. If you’re asking if I think she’s still alive,” Charlotte’s voice broke slightly as she spoke, and she looked away in embarrassment. “I think we’d know about it if she wasn’t.”

Alexa could only nod in response; for the first time since she’d turned, she began to feel that perhaps a very real danger was slowly creeping into her life.

 

“Liv, get down,” Charlotte said calmly, extending a hand to the furious pink shape lurking on top of the wardrobe. She recoiled with a sharp gasp of pain.

“You okay?” asked Becky hesitantly, as Charlotte licked her own blood from her wrist with a grimace.

“Little shit bit me,” she muttered.

“Well duh, she’s fucking terrified of you,” Alexa interjected with an exasperated sigh. “Last time you put hands on her, you snapped her arm across your knee.”

“In hindsight, a choice I regret,” Charlotte admitted, as Liv let out a low, rumbling growl from the shadows above them.

“Is this a Liv thing, or a baby vamp thing?” Becky asked, eyeing Liv with a combination of amusement and distrust.

“Bit of both,” Sasha said. “Didn’t help that Carmella antagonised her.”

“I didn’t realise baby vamps were this... unpredictable,” Becky murmured, watching with alarmed awe as Liv aimed a vicious kick at Charlotte, who had moved closer once again.

“If you ever meet Nattie, get her to tell you stories about newly turned Charlotte,” Alexa smirked. “By all accounts, she was even worse.”

“They’re only this bad for the first week or so,” Charlotte said coolly, ignoring Alexa’s remark. “The excessive hunger and difficulty with self restraint sticks around longer, but that can be dealt with.”

“Your whole body is literally turning into something else,” Sasha shrugged. “No wonder your brain goes a bit nuts trying to cope with it.”

“What even happened?” Becky asked, inching over to the wardrobe to try and catch a glimpse of Liv. Sasha suddenly looked sheepish.

“I, uh, tried to show her how to feed without killing whoever she’s drinking from,” Sasha mumbled.

“You’re not exactly an expert in that yourself,” Alexa quipped cruelly; for a moment, Sasha looked hurt, but her expression quickly shifted to a snarl of irritation.

“Was Carmella by any chance a part of this learning experience?” Charlotte’s tone was stern, but her expression was gentle.

“She uh, might have been, yes,” Sasha said in a very small voice, Charlotte drawing her attention away from Alexa. “To cut a very long story short, Liv wouldn’t let go, so Carmella sprayed her with the spray bottle you use for misting your plants. And then Liv went nuts, so Carmella chased her up here with a broom.”

“And now she won’t come down,” Charlotte finished with a sigh, rubbing her temples.

“You’re probably not helping,” Alexa added, and Charlotte threw her a look so poisonous that she raised her eyebrows in surprise.

“How about you all go outside,” Becky reasoned. “And I’ll talk to her for a bit?”

“That’s not safe,” Charlotte and Alexa chorused, pausing only to glare at each other.

“Nah, Sasha can wait at the door,” Becky said, waving away their concerns with her good arm. “It’ll be fine. Everybody crowdin’ her is probably makin’ it worse.”

Grudgingly, Charlotte nodded and shepherded everybody out of the room, before pausing to turn back and look at Becky. In profile, with her face turned upward to look at Liv and her uninjured arm outstretched, she seemed almost angelic but for her evident exhaustion, her hair a bright halo of curls. There was a beatific warmth in her eyes despite the deep lilac shades of fatigue that pooled beneath her skin like bruises.

“Call me if you need me,” Charlotte said, her voice soft. Becky looked at her in surprise; Charlotte was the perpetual enigma, a woman willing to break an arm without a second thought some moments, then others seeming gentle, vulnerable, as though her veneer slipped and for a moment, Becky could look at the true face of all that she was, less a predator and more a sweet, musing lost soul, cast adrift in the turmoil of her own feelings. She wore hundreds of years of hurt as her crown of thorns; Becky longed for the moments in between, when Charlotte had a brief reprieve from the barbs of guilt and anguish, when she was as soft and whole and right as she might have been when she was human.

 _And_ _remember_ _Becky_ , she told herself. _She_ _isn’t_ _human_.

“I will,” Becky murmured eventually, tearing her gaze from Charlotte and shaking her head slightly, as though trying to shake off a dream she’d only just woken up from. Charlotte could only nod, and leave the room, a soundless sigh passing between her and Becky like pillow talk, a whispered promise, a last linking of hands before a farewell.

Becky turned back to Liv, who had been watching, kitten-eyed and baleful from her perch.

“I don’t mean to be like this,” she whispered, her voice crackling at the edges. “It’s just so much, on the inside I mean. So much noise, all wild.”

“I know,” Becky told her.

“My veins feel like they’re on fire.”

“That’ll go away.”

“You’re being kind to me,” Liv said hesitantly. “And yet my heart, my head, every part of me is telling me to kill you.”

“But you haven’t,” Becky pointed out. “You’re gettin’ better already. Just let us help you.”

“I’m afraid.”

“Of Charlotte?” Becky’s tone was gently questioning, but as she spoke she realised; she was afraid of Charlotte too.

“Of everything. Of Charlotte, of you, of myself. And I’m worried about Ruby,” Liv said, barely audible. Becky could see tears shining on her cheeks. “And I’m angry, angry because I can’t do anything. Not like this, with my head all screwed up. And what use is a vampire against people who kill vampires?”

Becky pondered for a moment; Liv made a good point.

“Charlotte,” Becky said eventually. “Will fix it. I know she will. Charlotte and Alexa and Sasha and Carmella will fix it. And if they can’t, they’ll know somebody who can. How about you come down? We can go talk to Charlotte together about Ruby.”

Liv nodded and hesitantly wriggled down from the top of the wardrobe, dropping neatly onto her feet and standing before Becky, her eyes full of a strange combination of tears, fright and curiosity. Becky reached out, slowly.

“Can I take this off?” she asked, pointing at Liv’s collar, and Liv dipped her head to let Becky reach the buckle. Awkwardly, her broken arm hindering her dexterity, she managed to undo the fastening and the heavy collar fell to the floor. Liv looked at it for a long moment, raising both her hands to touch her neck hesitantly.

“Come on,” Becky soothed. “We’ll go say sorry to Carmella, and put things to rights.Then we can get to talkin’ to Charlotte about your friend. Okay?”

“Okay,” Liv agreed, her voice slightly stronger and more confident now she had realised nobody around her was a real threat. She still balked at the mention of Charlotte, but Becky didn’t blame her. They exchanged a tentative smile and stepped out into the hallway together, broken arms linked, trusting in small doses with every motion.

 

“Charlotte-,” Alexa’s voice was halting, breathy, something between a whisper and a benediction to the dark, to loss, to hurt and bruising kisses. Her lashes were pearled with tears that shattered Charlotte into a kaleidoscope of gold and silver with every blink. Charlotte, beside her, was heaven spilled out in the shape of a woman, a quiet fire in her arms.

“Lexi,” Charlotte murmured, her gaze wandering as she mapped the stars in the lines of Alexa’s features, spun fine gossamer chains into new constellations with her hands in Alexa’s hair.

“How is it we always end up here again?” Alexa asked, reaching out to brush away Charlotte’s tears as they pearlesced on her cheeks. “How is it that we fight and fight, and no matter what, we’re back here? You’re bad for me. I’m bad for you.”

“The best things in life are the worst for you,” Charlotte sighed, closing her eyes as Alexa touched her skin, featherlight and fluttering, hesitant and as irrevocably drawn to her as a moth. “Like chocolates and falling in love.”

“I don’t know,” Alexa said. “Measles are pretty terrible for you, and they’re not good at all.”

“Don’t be a smartass,” Charlotte replied, opening her eyes to meet Alexa’s gaze, looking stormy and distant and impossibly beautiful. “Just for just now, let’s pretend nothing changed.”

“I can’t play at being human again for your conscience,” Alexa replied, stiffening in Charlotte’s embrace. “I’ll never be warm in your arms, in anybody’s arms, again.”

“When you left, you took everything good about me with you,” Charlotte whispered, her voice threatening to turn reedy as fresh tears flourished at the edges of her vision.

“When you turned me,” Alexa said. “You took everything I had.”

“So we’re even,” Charlotte breathed, and Alexa nodded, leaning into kiss Charlotte before she could even punctuate her sentence, a small laugh catching in her throat as Alexa rolled her over and trailed kisses down her neck. She paused, and rested her head on Charlotte’s chest, her small body curling close to Charlotte, some old human instinct seeking comfort from a body heat that wasn’t there. Still, that ancient knowledge of Charlotte’s bones, that familiar understanding of her embrace, the sensation that kissing her was coming home, even if home was a haunted house; it made Alexa feel human.

“Who knew eternal youth could make you feel so old?” Charlotte mumbled into Alexa’s hair.

“Don’t think about it,” Alexa replied. “Just give me right now.”

“Okay. Just for right now, I’m yours.”

“Just for right now,” Alexa agreed, knowing that they both lied, Charlotte’s blood in her veins, knowing that they’d always be each other’s, even if they lived forever.


	9. Chapter 9

“Vampire blood?” Carmella’s tone was light and conversational, but Becky could hear the slight strain in her voice.

“What about it?” Charlotte said with mounting suspicion, her eyes narrowed. She sat on the couch with Liv’s head in her lap, who lay curled up beside her with a blood bag. After a considerable number of apologies, a few good stories about Ruby, and bribery in the form of donor blood, Liv had decided to give Charlotte a second chance. After all, her broken arm had healed beautifully, and Charlotte had been very careful to be gentle with her. Charlotte’s supply of “emergency blood” had decreased dramatically since Alexa and Liv had made themselves at home at the Garden, both being insistent that they didn’t want to drink from humans, though Alexa maintained her diet of artificial blood substitute. Charlotte herself had only taken pains to keep a stock of donor blood for emergencies after the night she’d wound up having to feed from Becky; she’d rather avoid that awkwardness again.

“You’re so greedy,” Charlotte said gently, as Liv peered up at her innocently, her bloody lips shaping a smile. “Don’t finish all the O neg, it’s my favourite.”

“What about vampire blood?” Becky prodded, looking from Carmella to Charlotte with morbid interest.

“It makes you heal up faster,” Carmella said. “Not as fast as a vampire, but it helps.”

“And it can make you very, very sick,” Charlotte frowned. “Why are we even talking about this?”

“I’m just saying... if Becky’s arm was healed...” Carmella paused to shrug meaningfully. “She could help you guys find Ruby.”

Liv stirred and sat up at the mention of her sire, nodding emphatically. Becky noted, with a slight shudder, that she looked as though she’d been eating raspberries, her lips stained scarlet.

“A human could get in where we couldn’t,” Liv agreed. “They’d trust you. You could snoop around town and find out what they’re up to.”

“It’s not a terrible idea,” Alexa said, raising an eyebrow at Charlotte. “I wouldn’t wanna send her anywhere near a vampire hunter injured, though. These sorts tend to be scrappy.”

“I’m scrappier,” Becky said staunchly, clenching her fists and wincing as her broken arm reminded her it was definitely still broken. Finally feeling useful after spending so much time depending upon Charlotte for every facet of her existence, from a roof over her head to her job, was too good an opportunity to pass up. “I want to help.”

“You can help by staying here, where you aren’t liable to end up more involved in our drama than you already are,” Charlotte answered, her tone clipped. “This is vampire affairs. We’ll deal with it.”

“Good luck,” Alexa scoffed. “They’d stake us as soon as look at us.”

“Look,” Becky said, placing a hand on Charlotte’s arm to placate her. “We’ll figure out who these dopes are before we start makin’ plans to sneak into their HQ. We gotta start from the start, we can figure out what we’re gonna do once we know who we’re even pickin’ fights with, and if they even have Ruby at all.”

“Makes sense,” Sasha added, looking up from her magazine. “We don’t even know who we’re after; all we have to go on is the term ‘vampire hunters’. We don’t know which faction, we don’t know their motivation, we don’t know them from anybody else on the street. We can’t make the middle of the plan without making the start of it.”

“I know them,” Liv piped up, nodding as everybody turned to look at her incredulously. “I remember, Sarah went to the library and brought us back books to try and figure out who they were. Saint Philomena’s Order for Haemophage Research.”

“Haemophage?” Becky said, confused.

“It’s a... nasty term for a vampire,” Sasha said, hesitating over her words. “Dressed up as scientific language. It just means ‘blood eater’. They came up with it back when they didn’t know we were still as... aware and mentally alive as we had been as humans.”

“They came up with it,” Charlotte said pointedly. “When they were still rounding us up for experiments.”

“Hang on,” Becky muttered, furrowing her brow as though trying to remember something. “Wasn’t that hundreds of years ago? Back when they were burnin’ witches at the stake and stuff?”

“Nope. Early nineties,” Sasha replied. “Older vamps were smart enough not to be obvious, besides leaving enough telltale signs on the occasional kill to generate some folktales. This meant, whenever humans did find concrete proof of a vampire, it was usually a baby vamp. And you’ve seen yourself what they’re like.”

“So everybody just assumed you were all dangerously out of control?” Becky prompted.

“Yep. Started scaremongering rumours about zombie apocalypses, about funguses that control the brain and turn you into a bloodthirsty monster, all kinds of wild shit. And humanity, being humanity, couldn’t resist capturing a few examples to research and experiment on. I’ll save everybody the gross details, but it was probably the greatest atrocity in vampire history, and it all happened behind closed doors in the 1990s, not hundreds of years ago like you might assume,” Sasha explained. “So established vamps started uh, coming out of the coffin, so to speak. To educate people, and to put a stop to the barbaric practises of the human government. It worked insofar as humanity agreed to peacefully coexist if they could keep their remaining test subjects until they developed an artificial blood substitute, then they’d return them.”

“And we agreed to those terms,” Charlotte said quietly, her hands trembling with anger. “And they developed the fake blood, hoping to keep us like toothless pets on a diet that sapped every ounce of strength in our bodies and made us meek and docile. But they never gave their test subjects back.”

“What happened to them?” Becky asked in a hushed tone.

“They staked ‘em all and burned the bodies,” Charlotte said bitterly. “And we let it happen because this openness about our existence, our community, was too new to risk the backlash that would come from addressing the broken promise.”

“Fuck,” Becky breathed, sitting down beside Charlotte. She paused awkwardly for a moment, then draped her bad arm over Charlotte’s shoulders, pulling her into a clumsy hug. Charlotte let her body sag against Becky’s embrace; the whole topic was exhausting.

“It’s why we don’t drink the artificial blood,” Sasha explained. “Charlotte made sure we all learned about the history behind it.”

Becky was dimly aware of Alexa, who drank artificial blood almost exclusively, shifting uncomfortably in her seat.

“So Ruby’s in danger if she’s with these people callin’ themselves a research order,” Becky said slowly. “They’re doin’ what they did before.”

“We’d hope not, but it looks that way,” Charlotte answered, her voice low. “At least, from the little information we have. And if they are, then this is about more than Ruby. Everybody’s in danger.”

“We should raise the alarm with Nattie,” Alexa suggested. “Spread the word.”

“We can’t; if they aren’t fucking with vamps, then we’re creating false panic. If they are, then they could just stake all the vamps they’re testing on right now,” Sasha argued. “It’s lose-lose until we have more info.”

Charlotte stood up abruptly, and Becky shrank back, suddenly aware of just how much bigger, and stronger, Charlotte was than anybody else in the room. She tried not to think about when Charlotte had snapped Liv’s arm like a breadstick.

“We’re wasting time. I’m going downstairs to start opening up the bar. Carmella, you’re on first,” Charlotte said, stalking from the room as Carmella groaned in exasperation in her wake.

“I hate being on first,” Carmella groaned, trailing after Charlotte with a defeated expression.

“That’s her way of telling us to figure something out,” Sasha told Alexa and Becky conversationally. “We’re excused from bar duties tonight; we’ve got more pressing work to do. Plus, somebody has to look after Liv.”

Becky glanced at Alexa, who studied Liv with a combination of sadness and revulsion.

“Liv seems to know at least a little bit of what’s goin’ on,” Becky shrugged, as Liv nodded emphatically.

“Sure. We’ll go try to find out as much as we can about St Philomena’s, and Ruby, you and Alexa start figuring out what we’re gonna do once we find her,” Sasha instructed. Becky nodded, aware that Charlotte had managed to leave a rather uncomfortable, prickly atmosphere in her wake. Sasha headed to her room to start researching online, Liv bouncing along in her wake with a blood bag in hand. Alexa was studying her fingernails with such determined intensity that Becky found herself smiling slightly.

“Stuff isn’t still weird between us is it?” Becky tried, sitting down heavily beside Alexa and poking her gently in the ribs. “I wanna be friends again.”

“You should’ve thought of that before you fucked my ex,” Alexa replied tartly, though her posture softened slightly. Internally, she cursed herself. What was it about Becky that instantly made her let down the walls Charlotte built?

“I know, it was shitty and I’m sorry, but I didn’t know you guys even had anythin’ to do with each other,” Becky said. “And we weren’t anythin’ official. You asked if you could drink from me, I told you yes, if it was absolutely necessary, then we kind of ended up talkin’ about goin’ on a date. I’m sorry about what I did, but you don’t own me the moment we make plans together.”

“Does Charlotte?” Alexa asked delicately.

“No,” Becky said firmly, taking Alexa’s hands clumsily and forcing her to turn to face her. “Look, I like you a lot. I was lookin’ forward to our date. Heck, I trusted you enough to agree you feed from me if you needed it. Can’t we just go back to before? Start again? I don’t wanna miss out on gettin’ to know you because I fucked up somewhere.”

Alexa paused for a long moment, her silence shifting from sullen to contemplative. Becky could only marvel at how her eyes could change from cold and piercing to the distant blue of a far off horizon, a storm of thoughts written in her expression. Without thinking, Becky leaned in to kiss her, lost in the moment, her heart aching for Charlotte the second she felt herself give in to the soft, quiet connection between her and Alexa. She remembered how cruel and callous Carmella’s assertion that everybody falls in love with Charlotte had felt, how that whispering glow of delight had ignited inside her the moment Charlotte had even looked at her. And yet, Charlotte was like a Louvre centrepiece, made to be admired, but not held; too many sharp edges, cold as marble.

The silence was punctuated by Alexa’s sharp intake of breath as their lips met, though after a few seconds she softened against Becky, trying to allow herself to enjoy the kiss. It was so unlike kissing Charlotte that Alexa was almost surprised; she’d forgotten that specific sensation that came with kissing somebody warm and effervescent with life, that feeling of holding sunlight in your cupped hands, the shimmering, gasping, scarlet rush as the human heart raced recklessly the moment the merest suggestion of a kiss was presented. Alexa aggressively thought of everything but Becky as they kissed, everything but the heady thrum of her heart that seemed almost to roar in Alexa’s ears, the susurrusof her blood in her veins. She tried not to think too much about the fact this was the closest she’d been to a human since the Sasha debacle. She clambered onto Becky’s lap in sought of some semblance of control over the moment, breaking their kiss just long enough for Becky to whisper her name, her fangs too sharp for Becky’s kisses, Becky’s lips cut and bleeding like spilled wine. Before Alexa could react, the taste of her burned her mouth like an unholy communion; blood had always been the fiercest sacrament, as torturous as fire, and Alexa hadn’t tasted the real stuff since she’d turned Sasha. Becky’s kisses remained soft and yielding as her hands found Alexa’s waist, Alexa desperately resisting the violent, conflicting urges that told her to rip out Becky’s throat in one breath and begged her to undress her in another.

“Becky please stop,” Alexa whispered hoarsely, pushing Becky away, raising her hand to her mouth. “You’re bleeding.”

“Oh shit, sorry,” Becky said, wiping her lip on her sleeve. “I was kinda into it in the moment, forgot about the whole uh, vampire thing.”

“You’re astonishing,” Alexa said wearily, flopping forward to press her face into Becky’s shoulder in exasperation; she wished she’d ever been able to “forget the whole vampire thing”, but that had never been a possibility. From the moment Charlotte had wandered into her life, Alexa’s fate had been sealed. Becky gently pressed a kiss to Alexa’s cheek.

“Do you forgive me?” Becky asked, grinning as she dodged the swipe Alexa aimed at her. They paused for a moment, suddenly aware that the tension between them had evaporated. Alexa looked almost kitten-like, her pupils huge, her fangs peeking out as she drew a shuddering sigh, wiping the droplets of blood Becky’s lips had left on her cheek away with a trembling hand.

“You’re such a tease,” Alexa said, rolling her eyes and getting to her feet, doing her best to look absolutely unperturbed. “Come on. I know Sasha told us to plan, but I think we might have more luck asking some of The Garden’s patrons about this whole disappearing vampires business. They’re mostly fangfuckers anyways.”

“I reckon you’re onto somethin’,” Becky agreed, following Alexa without hesitation. Anything for a little excitement; being trapped inside was starting to turn her stir crazy, and even the bar was a good enough change of scenery from the apartment. Becky’s body hummed with a quiet buzz; she had kissed Alexa. It didn’t feel real, and yet it was, and Alexa had kissed her back. Maybe Carmella had been right; maybe she ought to stop wasting time chasing somebody who only threw out crumbs of affection, acknowledgement, appreciation, when she wanted something in return.

 _It’s more complicated than that, and you know it is. Charlotte deserves better than you thinking about her like that_ , a small voice in the back of Becky’s mind murmured. Becky shook the thought away; it was easier not to think too hard about the various intricacies of Charlotte and all of her hang-ups.

 

“You know, you’re bein’ very blasé for somebody who was sittin’ in my lap not half an hour ago,” Becky remarked over the pulse of music and conversation as Alexa cut through the crowded bar ahead of her. Alexa seethed quietly; she could practically feel Becky grinning at her in the dark. She curled her lip with a soft hiss as she passed another vampire, who studied Becky hungrily from her seat at the bar.

“Back off, Nikki. She’s mine,” Alexa’s voice was somewhere between a quiet purr and a snarl, and Becky shivered slightly. The women simply rolled her eyes dramatically at the woman next to her, who looked so similar Becky momentarily questioned if she was seeing double. Becky had no time to introduce herself however, as Alexa led her onward toward the door through the back, though she halted abruptly as Charlotte stepped out of the crowd as though emerging from nowhere, an eyebrow raised with questioning contempt.

“At what point did she become yours?” Charlotte asked sweetly, her voice dripping with poisonous honey.

“Maybe it’s time both of you realised I’m not anybody’s,” Becky said staunchly, sick of the argument before it had even begun, pushing between the two women as they faced off and heading through the back. She headed out the backdoor into the garden, picking her away across the grass and sitting down heavily in a patch of daisies. This whole vampire thing had been fun until everybody got so keen to “own” her, like some kind of pet. She blew out a frustrated sigh, tearing up handfuls of grass with irritation.

“Don’t do that,” Liv’s voice startled Becky so much she almost leaped to her feet. “Sasha loves the garden. Don’t hurt the plants.”

Guiltily, Becky let the fronds fall from her fingers back into the greenery, wiping her palms on her jeans with a sheepish expression.

“Aren’t you helpin’ Sasha?” Becky asked, as Liv sat down beside her, flopping backward to lie in the grass and look up at the little patch of stars that belonged to Charlotte, the piece of sky afforded to The Garden Of Earthly Delights amongst the coarse crush of the oppidan skyline.

“We came downstairs to see if we could find anybody who knew anything after we realised you guys were gone, and Sasha said it’d be good for me to be around vampires and humans without trying to eat anybody,” Liv said earnestly. “But Alexa and Charlotte started arguing and Sasha went to diffuse it. I came out here because I saw you leave.”

“Got sick of Alexa and Charlotte fightin’ over who gets to hold my leash,” Becky explained with a frown, letting herself fall backward to lie down beside Liv. “How’re you feeling?”

“Hungry,” Liv admitted. “It’s the only way my body knows how to feel. But it’s getting better. Slowly. How’s your arm? I’m sorry I hurt you.”

“Healin’ up like a dream,” Becky reassured her, lifting her arm up in front of her to let the moonlight filter through her fingers. “Wanna sign my cast? We used to do that at school whenever anybody broke somethin’ and had to get a cast.”

Liv was about to reply when she suddenly sat bolt upright, her face turned slightly to the side as though she was listening intently to something Becky couldn’t hear. Becky slowly eased herself into a sitting position, studying Liv’s face to try and identify what had her attention. Without any warning, she seemed almost to leap to her feet and bolt across the grass, Becky scrambling to follow.

“Liv! Liv, wait! What’s happenin’?” Becky demanded, skidding slightly as she stepped from grass to gravel to follow Liv down the alley that ran down the side of the bar. Before Becky could set foot in the alleyway however, Liv emerged from the darkness with a struggling human in tow.

“It’s one of the guys who took Ruby,” Liv said triumphantly, holding the man up by the his shirt collar. Becky watched the colour drain from the man’s face and smiled. Just an hour ago, they had no leads, and now? Everything they needed had wandered right into their lap.

 

 


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw, this chapter has some graphic violence

The stars seemed to peer down into the garden like a silent jury, expressionless in silver as Charlotte paced back and forth across the grass, golden and vital. The man glared up at her with a hatred that filled Becky with a cold, squirming discomfort. Sasha and Liv had a firm grasp of him, though he occasionally struggled violently as though hoping to catch his captors off guard and break free. Alexa simply stood to one side to watch, her arms crossed, her body turned slightly away from Becky. Becky longed to reach out to her, to apologise, though she wasn’t sure what she wanted to apologise for; she just felt like she should. The eerie warble of echoing show tunes crept out into the garden, the gales of laughter from inside the bar muted and distant. Whichever queen was on right now was doing a killer set.

“If you’re not going to make yourself useful to me,” Charlotte was saying, her tone measured. “I will just kill you. The choice is yours; answer my questions, or I will tear you in half. I’m not being hyperbolic either. Half to send to your family, half to send to the organisation that sent you here.”

Becky swallowed nervously, and Alexa moved to stand slightly in front of her, almost protectively. Despite her diminutive stature and being far weaker than the other vampires due to her synthetic diet, Alexa made Becky feel safe, somehow safer than the aureate, impossible force that was Charlotte. Charlotte’s fury was reckless wildfire that threatened to swallow Becky with everybody else. Alexa just seemed to have more control, a colder rage that focused intensely rather than flaring outward to destroy everything in its path. As Becky felt Alexa slowly slide her arm around her waist, Becky saw the man wriggle desperately against Liv and Sasha’s grasp once again.

“I’m telling you nothing,” he said, though there was a distinct note of fear in his voice. He seemed to pause for effect before spitting directly at Charlotte, who neatly stepped backward to avoid it.

“Disgusting habit,” she remarked, drawing her hand back and striking him so hard across the face Becky heard his jaw dislocate with the sickening sound of bone grinding against bone. “And next time, I’ll hit you harder and tear the jaw off your face. Speak up, I don’t have all night.”

Until Becky felt Alexa’s fingers lace through hers, she hadn’t realised her hands were shaking.

“Don’t look,” Alexa whispered, barely audible. “Okay? If he won’t talk, she’ll kill him. I don’t want you to see her like that. Don’t look.”

He tried to raise his hands to clutch his face as he wailed in pain, but Sasha and Liv afforded him no quarter, and held his arms pinned by his sides. Becky wondered if this man had ever considered the possibility of dying at the hands of a house of vampires, in a secret garden, to the sound of an incredibly vocally talented drag queen belting There Is Nothin’ Like A Dame as though their life depended on it. Becky supposed it was an incredibly specific set of circumstances; not even vampire hunters could prepare for such a string of events. Becky watched with horrified fascination as the man, drooling all over himself thanks to Charlotte’s realignment of his face, began trying to speak.

“Sent back for the little one,” he slurred, jerking his head in Liv’s direction. “Thought she’d lead me to more of you. She did.”

“And why did you want to be led to more of us?” Charlotte pressed. “If you were just out to kill us, you’d have staked Ruby and left her for us to find.”

“Even if I knew, I wouldn’t tell scum like you,” the man sneered, managing to summon some fight despite the damage to his face. So quickly Becky almost didn’t seen it, the man opened his hand to reveal a blade he’d hidden there and cut himself. The scent of blood struck Liv and Sasha like a physical force, both of them letting him go in a moment of surprise, but the moment was all the man needed; he lunged forward toward Alexa, stake in hand, before Charlotte intercepted and cuffed him across the face. There was a sickening crunching, popping sound as his lower jaw was torn entirely from his face by the force of Charlotte’s strike. His eyes were wide, his tongue lolling uselessly as blood and spit spilled down his front. He dropped to his knees, raising his hands to his face as he gurgled helplessly. Alexa remained tense, clinging to Becky protectively. Charlotte kicked the stake out of his hands, and Becky felt Alexa raise her hands to cover her ears, pulling her down to her chest and trying to turn Becky away from the brutality unfolding before them. Charlotte grabbed each of the man’s legs, pulled them apart, and kept pulling; even muffled by Alexa’s arms, Becky could hear him trying to scream, the sound of his flesh tearing as Charlotte cleanly tore him in half.

“Don’t open your eyes,” Alexa murmured, her grip tightening on Becky. Despite her request, Becky couldn’t help but glance at Charlotte, the thick ropes of muscle in her arms tense, a viscous sheen of gore darkening her skin to scarlet. She was, in that moment, a god of war; huge, forbidding, wearing death and viscera like a ceremonial robe, a man in pieces at her feet. Becky tried not to look at the body; she felt slightly faint, the ripping sound as Charlotte had pulled him apart still ringing in her ears.

“Deal with this,” Charlotte told Sasha, turning on her heel and leaving a scarlet trail and a heavy silence in her wake.

 

When Charlotte came to bed, Alexa did not resist. Becky barely stirred between them, her hair a red cloud pooling across the pillows, her cheek resting on Alexa’s chest. She looked terribly small, even to Alexa, as Charlotte looped her arms around her, her sleep disturbed as she furrowed her brow and moved closer to Alexa, a small noise of distress escaping her lips.

“She’s having a nightmare,” Charlotte whispered sadly.

“I did tell her not to look,” Alexa replied, watching as Charlotte tenderly brushed a few stray strands of Becky’s hair out of her face. To think Charlotte had bodily torn a man in half mere hours before was almost inconceivable; she seemed so gentle, so warm, her fingertips just touching Alexa‘s arm, almost hesitantly, her arms wrapped around Becky.

“I shouldn’t have done it,” Charlotte admitted. “I was just... so angry. For Ruby, suffering somewhere all alone, and for Liv, who doesn’t know what she’s done, for you; your whole life, everything you’d built after we... went our separate ways, all turned upside down. I was just... angry.”

“That’s not the Charlotte I ever knew,” Alexa murmured. “That’s not the Charlotte I fell in love with. You haven’t been yourself for a while, Charlie.”

Alexa’s voice was soft, and sad, her delicate hands finding the contours of Charlotte’s cheekbones to gently brush away the tears she hadn’t even noticed she was shedding as Alexa spoke.

“You calling me Charlie always gets me,” Charlotte sniffed, laughing slightly at the ridiculousness of the situation.

“The duality of Charlotte Flair never ceases to amaze me,” Alexa said, bemused. “You tear a man limb from limb, but you also cry because I called you an old pet name? Make up your mind.”

“I can’t,” Charlotte replied, resting her chin on the top of Becky’s head. “I can’t get away from it. We went through enough the first time all this shit happened. I lost enough friends, I can’t do this again, Lexi.”

“You won’t have to,” Alexa replied. “We’ll find Ruby. If anything, this might provoke them into coming out of hiding, we can find where they’re keeping her. But for me, and for Liv and Sasha, and Mella and Becky, don’t do anything like that again. Please. You’re better than that.”

“I can’t promise anything,” Charlotte said. “I don’t know what they’ve done to Ruby.”

“Charlotte?” Becky’s voice was raspy with sleep, as she sat up, looking between Charlotte and Alexa in confusion. She jumped slightly when she noticed Charlotte’s arms draped about her, fear flashing across her features.

“It’s okay,” Alexa soothed. “She’s okay. She was protecting us.”

“Protectin’ us,” Becky said slowly. She leaned up to kiss Charlotte once, briefly, before turning to do the same to Alexa. “Thank you for takin’ care of me.”

Within moments, she had fallen back asleep.

“She’ll be okay,” Alexa said reassuringly. “She knows you were trying to keep us safe.”

She had not missed just how hurt Charlotte had looked at Becky’s fear.

“There’s something about her, Lexi,” Charlotte sighed. “I just like being close to her.”

“Me too,” Alexa said carefully. “I like being close to you too. Even if you’re bad for me.”

“Let’s be bad for each other,” Charlotte murmured, leaning over to kiss Alexa once, a slow, lingering kiss that made Alexa gasp when they broke apart. Becky stirred slightly beside her, and both Alexa and Charlotte looked down at her, angelic in the thoughtless fugue of sleep. Charlotte extended her hand to Alexa; even in the dark, Alexa could see the outstretched pinky, a patient invitation for a pinkie promise. Alexa sighed, then slowly linked pinkies with Charlotte.

“Let’s share,” Charlotte said decisively, and Alexa nodded once, solemnly.

“We’ll share her,” Alexa agreed. “God only knows we have enough love to share between all three of us.”

“Even when it hurts,” Charlotte answered.

“Especially when it hurts, and your love hurts more than anything you did to that guy out there,” Alexa said flatly. “I can take it. Just don’t hurt her.”

 

“What are you doing?” Carmella asked, sitting on the countertop whilst she waited for her toast. Charlotte was sipping demurely on a blood bag at the table. Liv and Sasha were rummaging in the fridge. Alexa leaned over Becky’s shoulder as she scrolled through page after page of empty timesinks in internet content form.

“Buzzfeed quiz,” Alexa replied with an eye roll. “Which 90s Girl Power Icon Are You?”

“I wanna take it when you’re done,” Charlotte insisted, kicking Becky lightly under the table. Alexa smiled slightly, taking a seat beside Charlotte and pulling the cap off the bottle of artificial blood she was having for breakfast, if a meal could still be considered breakfast at dusk. She hadn’t wanted to admit it, but after spending almost a month at The Garden, their strange little group had started feeling like family, piecemeal and broken and lost, but family all the same.

“We need to get you off that stuff,” Charlotte said, nodding at the bottle in Alexa’s hand. Alexa’s cheeks turned pink.”

“You know I can’t feed from people, I-“ Alexa began, irritated that Charlotte had opened up the conversation in front of everybody.

“Start off like Liv. Drink the bagged stuff until you feel safe enough to try feeding from somebody,” Charlotte shrugged. “You’re a big girl, and it comes naturally once you do it enough. We need you strong to find Ruby, and that stuff has done enough damage.”

“Is the artificial blood bad for you?” asked Becky in surprise, looking up from her quiz with raised eyebrows.

“Alexa’s lived off it her entire life as a vampire,” Charlotte explained. “So no matter what, she’ll always be weaker than other vampires. She’s not much stronger than a regular human on the fake stuff.”

“What do you have to lose now anyways?” Sasha said with a shrug, tossing a blood bag at Alexa from the fridge. She caught it reluctantly, staring down at it with an intense concentration.

“In a way,” Carmella said slowly, buttering her toast. “Sasha’s right. You were staying off real blood so your family would still accept you, and well... that ship sailed a while ago.”

“I guess it’s just hardwired into my brain that the real stuff is bad,” Alexa shrugged, turning the bag over and over in her hands.

“Look,” Becky said. “I trust you, you trust me, and I’m alright with the whole feedin’ thing. You can try with me, and we can get Charlotte to make sure nothin’ goes wrong. If you gotta be strong for fightin’, for Ruby, maybe you oughta try it.”

Alexa mulled Becky’s words over.

“I wouldn’t let anything happen to her,” Charlotte told her quietly, placing a hand on her shoulder. “I’ll talk you through it.”

“I have to think about it,” Alexa said, shaking her head and waving away the conversation irritably. Carmella seemed to sense the shift in mood immediately.

“Hey Bex,” she asked, motioning to the laptop. “Who did you get in the quiz?”

“Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” Becky said with a grin. Charlotte had the audacity to look offended, until Becky primly reminded her that she was still making up for frightening everybody during the debacle with the intruder.

“You’re going to be the death of me,” Alexa said wearily, putting the cap back on the bottle of artificial blood and sliding it across the table. Becky was right; everybody, perhaps Becky most of all, needed her strong. Alexa punched a hole in the blood bag and began to drink.

 

 

 

 


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tumblr is @tables-ladders-flair, i’m better at responding there than i am to questions posted here in reviews 
> 
> i promise, for those of you reading for thirst reasons, the filth is coming. for those of you reading for plot, that’s coming too.

Charlotte’s voice was soft as the hum of crystal, her words poured molasses as she murmured reassurances to Becky, cradled in her lap.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Alexa asked, kneeling on the bed between Becky and Charlotte’s legs, resting her hand on Becky’s thigh. She could feel her trembling. Becky nodded.

“I want you to feed from me,” Becky said, her voice huskier than usual, reaching out to take Alexa’s hands and pull her closer with a tremulous, restrained want that made Alexa instinctively want to give into her request.

“Where should I go?” Alexa asked Charlotte in an undertone, trying to ignore the wild galloping beat of Becky’s heart.

“Stay away from the carotids, they can go very quickly if you don’t know what you’re doing. Find a vein. They’re slower. I’ll help you,” Charlotte promised. Becky indicated a point near her collarbone.

“Maybe here would be a good start,” she suggested shyly, and Charlotte nodded in agreement as Becky slowly slipped her top over her shoulders, exposing her bare chest. Alexa took a deep breath and nodded too, leaning forward and positioning herself as though she was about to press a trail of kisses to Becky’s neck. She was so close she could smell the blood rushing beneath her skin, and she swallowed apprehensively.

“I’ll show you,” Charlotte said gently. “Becky... likes being fed from. She won’t mind.”

Alexa watched as Charlotte flashed her a winsome smile, noting how white and even her teeth were, her fangs glinting cruelly in the half-light.

“Don’t just bite; your fangs should be what breaks the skin, they’re sharp, that’s what they’re supposed to do. If you try and break the skin with the rest of your teeth, you’ll bruise her up more and it’ll take longer to heal,” Charlotte told her, before dipping low to sink her fangs into Becky’s neck, painfully slowly. Becky arched her back and let out a soft moan, as the smell of blood hit Alexa with such ferocity that she had to consciously try not to simply plunge her fangs into Becky’s jugular and drink her dry. Slowly, she mimicked Charlotte and eased her fangs into the spot Becky had indicated, a wild, ecstatic rush of warmth filling her as she felt the heat of blood flood her mouth. She groaned against Becky’s skin, feeling the blood run down her neck and between her breasts, staining her clothes with a ruddy flourish.

“Don’t waste it,” Charlotte whispered from somewhere above her. “It’s fun to play with, but don’t waste it.”

Alexa swallowed, feeling Becky’s hands slide into her hair as she sucked the life from her with a greed she had never known she was capable of; somewhere showers of stars seemed to explode behind her eyes, her stomach in a tense knot as a shiver crawled across her flesh.

“It feels good,” Charlotte told her. “Feeding. It feels good. Let yourself enjoy it.”

Alexa let herself give in, lost in Becky and Charlotte’s unified embrace, dimly aware Becky was trembling in her arms.

“Alexa,” Becky’s voice was dreamy and far away, but the moment she spoke, Alexa pulled away from her, surprised at her own ability to stop the moment she was concerned that Becky had had enough. Becky was sprawled as a bloodied Venus, her hair a wild mane, bright as fire against the sheets, her blood brighter still. She was scattered like roses, bruises already rising where Charlotte and Alexa had fed.

“Thank you,” Becky mumbled, stroking Alexa’s hair as she rested her head on her chest. Charlotte cradled both of them, gently, as though she was holding birds. All bloody, all exhausted, Becky clinging to Alexa and Charlotte in a daze, the air between them was thick with unspoken thoughts and murmurs and secrets. There was a long moment of shared sighs and silence.

“Thank you,” Alexa whispered into Becky’s hair, holding her close and inhaling the scent of her blood, which mingled strangely with the smell of Charlotte’s perfume on her skin. Becky turned over in her arms to kiss her, her embrace sluggish and dizzy as the adrenaline of being bitten ebbed away. Alexa stiffened against her for a moment, then allowed herself to give into the kiss, letting her hands slide around Becky’s waist to pull her onto her lap. For Becky, it felt a little odd to sit in the lap of somebody so much shorter, but she didn’t dare point it out. Charlotte lay alongside them, propped up on one elbow as she trailed her fingertips down Becky’s spine, pausing where she brushed Alexa’s fingers to flutter there as though uncertain where to let her touch linger.

“I didn’t think I’d like sharing,” Charlotte admitted. “But I did. And you did good, Becky. Two at once is a lot. It’s tiring. Do you feel okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Becky croaked, looking slightly wan in the half light. “Might just need a bit of time to do some recoverin’.”

“Take all the time you need,” Alexa murmured, pressing a kiss to Becky’s cheek and momentarily tightening her embrace. “Thank you for making this so... well, maybe nice is the wrong word, but thank you for making my first real try at feeding less traumatising than the Sasha debacle.”

“That’s not hard,” Charlotte snorted, shoving Alexa playfully. Becky wriggled off Alexa’s lap and lay between them to pull both of them close.

“I like sharing too,” she said decisively, as Charlotte flashed a smug smirk, snuggling into the blankets. “Charlotte, your boobs are suffocating me.”

“Is that a complaint?”

“No, just an observation,” Becky said, shrugging against Charlotte. Sandwiched between Charlotte and Alexa, Becky felt at odds; both women made her feel safe, protected, cradled in the embrace of the embodiment of the perfect killer. However, somewhere in the back of her mind, she was distinctly aware that as she had allowed them to feed from her, she had been so close to death she could’ve tasted it. Had Charlotte or Alexa wanted to, either one could’ve exsanguinated her and tossed her aside like an empty juice box. With Charlotte and Alexa reconciling rapidly over their shared infatuation for Becky, what was to stop them simply killing her and reuniting as lovers? As Becky met Charlotte’s gaze and watched her lick a stray droplet on blood from her lips, she decided it was probably better not to think about it.

 

“You don’t look so good,” Carmella remarked as Becky shambled into her and Sasha’s room, flopping down onto the bed beside Sasha.

“Alexa and Charlotte drank a bit much then?” Sasha asked, without taking her eyes off the screen. Liv sat crosslegged on the floor, playing Legend of Zelda, whilst Sasha directed her to various side quest triggers and missed treasure chests. “Go back up there, I wanna trigger the quest to get the Deluxe Pictobox from Lenzo.”

“Just a bit,” Becky murmured.

“I know the feeling,” Carmella said kindly, rooting around in the chest of drawers by the bed and extricating a packet of iron tablets. “You’ll be anaemic for the next few days, take these”

“Thanks,” Becky said gruffly, as Carmella set about cleaning the bites on her neck and bandaging them. “Any luck with the St Philomena stuff?”

“Yes, actually,” Sasha said brightly, tearing her eyes away from the screen. “When I was uh... tidying up after Charlotte, I found the dude’s cellphone. Of course the address for their hideout was saved as his work address. Fucking idiot.”

“Now we just need to figure out how to get in,” Liv said, pausing her game to climb up onto the bed. “It’s in a church.”

“We could just show up,” Becky shrugged.

“If we wanted to get everybody staked, then sure,” Carmella replied, rolling her eyes. “Nah. We need to be a little smarter about this.”

“Usually, just letting Charlotte kick a few doors in and snap a few necks is persuasive enough whenever we need anything done,” Sasha explained, leaving Becky wondering what they could possibly need done that would involve Charlotte openly murdering people. “But these guys, if they managed to catch Ruby of all people, know what they’re doing.”

“Ruby’s strong,” Liv advised. “Real strong, nearly as strong as Charlotte or Sasha. They were ready for her.”

“Yeah, if you can imagine somebody being ready for absolutely anything Charlotte could throw at them, you have an idea of just how prepared for vampire interference these guys are,” Sasha said grimly. The group sat in silence for a moment, sobered by the monumental scale of their task. As they mused hopelessly on how to proceed, Alexa knocked briefly on the doorframe and entered the room.

“What are y’all up to? You look suspicious,” Alexa joked as she sat down on the bed beside Becky. As her hand brushed Becky’s thigh, Becky jumped a little at her touch and looked away, concentrating very hard on the carpet rather than look at Alexa.

“Thinking about rescuing Ruby,” Carmella said. “Liv and Sasha found the place the St Philomena’s dudes are hanging out at.”

“Who knew Lilo and Stitch over there would make such good detectives,” Alexa remarked wryly, nodding in Sasha and Liv’s direction. “What’s the plan?”

“We uh, don’t have one. Yet,” Sasha said lamely. “But we’re trying to come up with something.”

“Somethin’s better than nothin’,” Becky shrugged. “We’ll figure it out. Where’s Charlotte?”

“In bed,” Alexa replied. “She’s sulking because I told her she can’t keep tearing people she disagrees with in half.”

“Well, if she hadn’t torn that guy in half, we wouldn’t have found their hideout,” Sasha shrugged.

“And to be fair, he did try to spit on her,” Becky added. “Was askin’ to get ripped in half at least a wee bit.”

Alexa stared at Becky for a long moment, until Becky shifted nervously and was about to ask if there was something on her face, before Alexa spoke.

“You and Mella are human,” Alexa said slowly.

“Glad you’ve noticed, I was under the impression we might be ducks,” Carmella quipped sarcastically, though a withering look from Alexa quickly curtailed her attitude.

“The point I’m making is, maybe Charlotte or Liv or Sasha or I couldn’t waltz in there... but you guys could,” Alexa said with a shrug. “I can picture you two trussed up like good church ladies, getting in on the vampire hunting business.”

“Wouldn’t that endanger everything we have here?” Carmella asked.

“Maybe that’s necessary; we can be bait. Or at least some kind of leverage for you to get in,” Alexa reasoned. “You can tell them you have information on where to find the strongest vampire house in the state, and the queen of this town. They’d be eating out the palm of your hand.”

“I don’t wanna put anybody in danger,” Becky said firmly. “I don’t wanna use anybody as bait. I’ll go in there, and I’ll string ‘em along as best as I can but I’m not puttin’ anybody here at risk.”

“Well all we can do is see how this turns out,” Alexa replied noncommittally.

“We’ll check it out tomorrow, if Becky’s cool with it,” suggested Carmella, glancing between Alexa and Becky apprehensively. “We can just... case the joint. We don’t have to go in.”

Becky let out a long, laboured sigh, frowning at the expectant faces of her companions.

“I’ll do it for Ruby,” she said. “But if it looks like Charlotte... like any of you guys are in danger, I’m bailin’ out.”

Becky wasn’t entirely sure what she’d just agreed to, but she nodded decisively to punctuate her sentence. These people had barely known her a month, and they had taken her into their home, given her a job, a place to sleep, and boundless love and support. For the first time, since leaving home, Becky finally felt she’d found a new home, and a family with it.

 

 


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm not super happy with this chapter, might come back and edit it, but posting for now.

“Liv won’t get out of bed,” Sasha grumbled. “She just keeps saying ‘I’m baby!’ and pulling the blankets over her head.”

“Probably overwhelmed, poor thing,” Charlotte said, her expression a strange combination of concern and fondness.

“That’s a change in attitude from when you were trying to get her off the top of the wardrobe with a broom a little while back,” Alexa remarked without looking up from her book, one perfect brow arched.

“We’re used to each other now,” Charlotte said defensively. “We got to know each other. Besides, vamps take care of their progeny like they’re our children when they first turn, and we maintain that connection for the rest of our lives. Without Ruby, she’d be all alone.”

“If you sired Ruby, and Ruby sired Liv, does that make you her grandma?” Sasha asked thoughtfully as Alexa cackled from the couch.

“That’s not how it works and you know it,” Charlotte replied, crossing her arms across her chest moodily.

“I think she might be scared,” Becky said slowly. “We’re going right to the door of the people who took Ruby, after all. That’s probably a bit worryin’ for her.”

“I’ll go talk to her,” Charlotte sighed, getting to her feet. She had enough experience with the tumultuous emotions and anxieties of baby vampires by now to deal with Liv; after all, she’d turned enough of them. She knocked lightly on the door of the room Liv had made her own before entering, finding herself faced with a groaning heap of duvet. A few stray locks of pink hair poked out the top.

“Hey baby girl,” Charlotte said softly, moving very, very slowly and quietly so as not to upset the clearly distressed mass of blankets. She sat down on the edge of the bed and rested her hand on top of the blankets reassuringly.

“Hey,” Liv trilled in response, muffled beneath the swathes of fabric. She sounded like she’d been crying. “Are you mad at me?”

“Not at all, sweet thing,” Charlotte said, climbing onto the bed to sit down properly, with her back against the pillows, Liv’s heap beside her. “You wanna come out?”

There was a whimper and a long pause before Liv cautiously wriggled out from under the covers and rolled over to lie down beside Charlotte, curling up against her like a little cat. A small hand slipped up Charlotte’s shirt to rest on her stomach, as though seeking some comfort from the contact with her skin. Hesitantly, Charlotte wrapped her arms around Liv and drew her closer, so she could rest her head on her chest and sink into the embrace properly.

“Brave girl, you wouldn’t have let me hug you a few weeks ago,” Charlotte commented encouragingly as Liv sniffled and started to cry. Hastily, Charlotte began murmuring soothing words and dabbing at her cheeks with the hem of her shirt; other people crying had never been something she’d known how to deal with.

“You’ve been so nice to me, even though I’ve been bad,” Liv said with tremendous melancholy, her sweet little face stained with tears. “And I let them take Ruby, and now-“

“Hey, hey, that’s not true at all!” Charlotte told her, brushing her hair out of her face. “These guys are tough. Not even the toughest vampire could have stopped them from taking away Ruby. But it’s okay, we’re going to get her back, see?”

Liv nodded, hiccoughing pathetically, though she started to giggle in spite of herself as Charlotte scattered her cheeks with tiny kisses.

“I’m kissing away all your tears,” Charlotte told her. “Because that’s what Ruby would do. Coming with me was the best thing for you to do to help her, and you’ve been so good.”

“I’ve been good?” Liv said slowly, warily.

“Yeah, you’ve been really good. Everybody likes having you around because you’re sweet, and you help in the house, and Becky says you even laugh at her terrible jokes,” Charlotte said. “And you’ve helped us find out all these things about St Philomena’s, and where Ruby might be. Ruby and Sarah are gonna be really proud of you.”

“Proud of me...” Liv nodded slowly, sniffing loudly, her arms locked around Charlotte’s waist. “I just thought they’d think I abandoned them when they needed me.”

“You think you’re okay to come to St Philomena’s with me and make sure Becky and Mella are safe? I’ll get you a Slurpee,” Charlotte promised, extending a pinky. Liv paused thoughtfully for a few moments before nodding and linking pinkies with Charlotte.

“Yeah, okay,” she said in a very small voice. “And I can have a Slurpee?”

“You can definitely have a Slurpee,” Charlotte assured her with a smile, kissing her forehead. “Come on, lets go and have breakfast.”

Liv nodded, squealing as Charlotte hefted her up into her arms bridal style, carrying her through to the kitchen. Liv blushed a little at how easily Charlotte had lifted her, hiding her face in Charlotte’s mane of blonde hair and clinging on with such determination that Charlotte wasn’t certain Liv would allow her to put her back down. In the end, Charlotte had to settle for sitting at the breakfast table with Liv in her lap, sucking on a blood bag with a krazy straw.

“I need to know,” Alexa enquired innocently. “When we suddenly had a fully grown child?”

“I’m baby,” Liv assured her, stone faced and unblinking.

“Leave her alone, Lexi,” Charlotte said. “Wanting comfort isn’t childish.”

Alexa scoffed.

“I can be as adult as I need to be,” Liv said uncertainly, moving to slide off Charlotte’s lap, but Charlotte held her in place. “I just... I’ve been feeling kinda marshmallowy lately.”

“Marshmallowy?” Becky asked.

“Yeah, like... fluffy. Insubstantial. Useless,” Liv explained. “Sometimes you need to be soft. And you guys... you let me be soft. You’ve been gentle with me. It’s what my heart needed.”

“Sometimes it’s better to be hard. Look after yourself. Stop giving people a shot at your weaknesses,” Alexa said with quiet contempt.

“What do I have to fear from any of you that I would want to hide my weaknesses?” Liv asked, resting her head on Charlotte’s shoulder and closing her eyes. “I feel loved.”

“That’s the thing you have to fear most of all,” Sasha interjected, in a remarkably good impersonation of Alexa’s sneering tone. Alexa simply tutted.

“You are loved,” Becky told Liv, leaning across the table to touch her arm. “You’re a little beam of sunshine. Maybe a bit wobbly round the edges, but nothin’ we don’t love you all the more for.”

“I barely know you all, and yet I feel like I’ve known you forever,” Liv said, sitting up. “I feel so comfortable; I could never have made friends this fast as a human.”

“Vampires are social animals, kitten,” Charlotte explained, fussing with her hair. “Almost pack animals, in a way. We form really strong relationships and tend to stick together. It means we’re also really good at making friends; sometimes vamps are just naturally drawn together, and that’s how little covens and houses form.”

“It’s weird,” Becky mused. “How the media always painted vampires as these solitary, mysterious creatures. All the movies and stuff made out you guys were super antisocial.”

“I’m not gonna lie, it gets pretty damn close to a cuddle pile,” Sasha said. “I know I’m still new to the game, comparatively, but you just crave that togetherness. All your senses are heightened when you turn too, so even being touched is infinitely more complex a sensation for us than humans can understand unless they turn.”

“I had no idea,” Becky tried hard not to think about the infinitely more complex sensations she could potentially visit upon Charlotte with this newfound knowledge. “This is so much more than just bein’ a goth with big teeth, isn’t it?”

“So so so much more,” Charlotte murmured. “It’s why a lot of vampires are quite cuddly, though we don’t always extend that to humans; we can feel your pulse, your blood rushing beneath your skin when we touch you even slightly. The prey drive sometimes makes it... difficult to be close to humans physically. It’s the prey drive that makes us seek out warmth all the time too; we’re designed to be drawn to body heat. We don’t feed on the dead.”

Becky nodded along with Charlotte’s explanation, fascinated. Mella, having clearly already been privy to this tutorial on vampire physiology and social dynamic, continued to scroll on her cellphone with an expression of detached boredom.

“As enlightening as this National Geographic special on vampire habits in the continental US is,” Alexa said curtly. “We need to figure out how we’re gonna do this. Becky, Mella, any ideas?”

“I say we just jump in headfirst. We go tell these dopes we wanna join up, we sit back and check out their HQ, we come home and report back to you guys on what we found,” Becky shrugged. “Overcomplicatin’ anythin’ will probably just screw our chances of gettin’ in.”

“Becky’s right. All we can do is go for it,” Carmella said decisively. “Besides, we’re just asking to come along to their evening sermon. They’re not gonna do anything besides say yes or no.”

“Alright, but we’ll stay nearby in case you need us,” Charlotte promised, taking Becky’s hand under the table and squeezing slightly. Becky squeezed back, her heart racing; somehow, she was even more afraid of these members of her own kind than any of the vampires she’d met. She set her jaw, pausing to smirk at the momentary expression of longing on Charlotte’s face as she studied the way the muscle jumped in Becky’s jawline. Liv shimmied off Charlotte’s lap and scrambled to get her coat, excited at the prospect of leaving The Garden after being stuck there for so long. With Liv out of the way, Becky leaned in close to whisper to Charlotte.

“You got any rewards in mind for me, doin’ this incredibly dangerous reconnaissance mission for you?” Becky teased, blissfully unaware of Alexa glowering jealously behind her.

“Becky, you’re going to a church, it’s not exactly the Killing Fields,” Charlotte replied, doing her best to look unruffled. “But as far as rewards go; you’re looking at it. You do what I want? I do what you want.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” Becky grinned, leaning into a hasty kiss, pausing to nip Charlotte’s lip gently with her teeth as she pulled away. “Let’s get moving.”

 

“Liv, I thought you said you’d packed stuff for the car?” Carmella asked with a frown.

“Snacks!” Liv chirped, triumphantly reaching into her bag to hold up a fistful of blood bags.

“If you keep drinking all the O neg, Charlotte’s gonna stake you her damn self,” Sasha remarked, raising her eyebrows at Liv’s ‘snacks’.

“I thought you were gonna bring something like… actually useful,” Carmella said, crestfallen.

“It’s plenty useful to me!” Liv replied brightly. Becky snorted at their exchange, pausing to glance at Charlotte in the driver’s seat beside her. She looked, as always, regal and composed, all cheekbones and focus, however Becky could detect an undercurrent of stress in her posture.

“Hey,” Becky muttered, trying not to draw Carmella’s attention to Charlotte’s unease; she didn’t want her going into their ‘mission’ nervous. “We’ll be fine, okay? You guys will be nearby if we need you, Mella and I can more than take care of ourselves, and we’re goin’ in easy. This doesn’t have to get messy. Chill.”

Charlotte nodded stiffly, her hands tightening on the steering wheel as they pulled into a parking space.

“Church is a few blocks away. Call me the second – and I mean the second – you need me,” Charlotte instructed as Becky and Carmella undid their seatbelts and climbed out of the car. Becky paused to quickly peck Charlotte and Alexa on the cheek.

“Becky, walk less like a lesbian. You’re going to church,” Sasha yelled at Becky’s retreating back as she made her way along the street beside Carmella.

“Be more gentle with me and I won’t have to walk like a lesbian,” Becky crowed in response, in her best Southern Belle voice.

“Stop yelling about lesbians, oh my god,” Carmella groaned. “You’re so conspicuous. Also just ‘cause it’s in church doesn’t mean they’re weird about like… gay stuff.”

“Dunno,” Becky shrugged. “Spendin’ all my time shut inside with five girls, where the last dude I saw in weeks was torn in half, does make me forget how to be less conspicuously gay. Either way though, we’re not vampires so they can’t complain that much. And if they do, all the more reason to let Liv murder them and suck the marrow out of their bones like a little pink version of those monsters in The Descent.”

Carmella could only roll her eyes at Becky’s lighthearted banter as they rounded the corner. The church hunched against the night sky, bathed in bleak yellow streetlamp glow. Becky was almost taken aback; the church look like, well… a church. Not a towering, shadowy penitentiary in the guise of an ecclesiastical establishment, not a looming laboratory that crackled with wicked electricity behind a façade of modern evangelical trappings, just a church. There was no ominous vein of lighting illuminating it amidst the roar of thunder, no eerie, moaning wind that shook the trees and rose gooseflesh on one’s arms. The church simply crouched there, faceless and devoid of any real menace at all.

“Let’s go,” Becky began striding across the street, Carmella having to jog slightly to keep up with her.

“Becky, wait! We need to plan what we’re gonna say-“ Carmella began, as Beckly blithely pushed the heavy oak door open and stepped into the slightly musty narthex, the well-worn navy carpet muffling their footsteps. Becky stuffed her hands in her pockets and looked around with an expression of mild interest.

“Nobody here,” she said, her voice seeming to bounce off the stark walls, fizzling into the hum of the fluorescent lighting.

“Are you ladies here for the sermon?” Becky wasn’t sure how a voice could sound so deeply old, and yet this one did as it crept from the doorway leading into the main section of the church. Becky and Carmella tentatively crossed the threshold, to find a stooping man in a moth-eaten suit standing before them.

“Uh, yeah, I mean, yes! We are!” Carmella said in a strange, false voice, saccharine as the little dish of ancient boiled sweets perched on the shelf, no doubt once used to coax scores of Sunday School students into the church proper for hymns. The man’s heavily lined face broke into a smile, the candyfloss wisps of white hair clinging to his skull fluttering gently in the breeze as the door in the narthex opened behind them.

“You’re the first here! We like newcomers, but punctual newcomers especially,” the man said, shepherding them up to the front and ushering them into a pew. “We’ll start shortly.”

“Never trust anybody who places so much emphasis on getting anywhere early,” Becky said in an undertone, hastily shifting to the side as Carmella aimed a kick at her ankle. People slowly began to filter into the church, though Becky noted they did not have the aura of churchgoers. Biting her lip and hoping she didn’t look to conspicuous, Becky settled herself in the pew and prepared for the sermon, unsure of why her hands were shaking.

The sermon was less a sermon, and more akin to some sort of violently right wing political rally; the air was thick with cries of slogans and demands to “stake the scourge”. Carmella was visibly uncomfortable, her breaths coming in slight shudders as she tried not to cry.

“They hate them so much Becky,” she said, barely audible. “Even the ones that drink the artificial blood, even the ones who do everything they want. They hate them.”

Becky could only nod sympathetically; she had just noticed, behind a tapestry on the wall slightly along from them, the vague shadow of a door handle was visible. As stealthily as she could, Becky pointed this out to Carmella, before sliding out of her seat and creeping along the wall, grateful for the fervour of the crowd as the little old man roared fire and brimstone promises to the “haemophage race”. She pushed the door inward and sidled through, blinking in surprise as she found herself in a long corridor lit with harsh, white strip lighting. Without hesitation, Becky jogged down the hallway, glancing over her shoulder to check she wasn’t being followed. As she made her way along the hallway, taking turns at random and hoping to find her way to something useful, she pricked the bag of blood Liv had thoughtfully packed in her bag for her ‘in case she got hungry’. With her fingertip, she smeared a little flourish of blood at each corner so she could find her way back. Most of the doorways and rooms she passed seem to lead to offices or laboratory type rooms, where ominous flasks and equipment lined the walls. Some, however, led down bleak, dark hallways where the lights were turned off. Some led into rooms full of implements that looked disturbingly like torture devices. Swallowing hard, Becky continued on, growing more and more tense until she rounded a corner and walked directly into a man in a white coat. He stared at her coldly.

“You aren’t supposed to be in here,” he told her, seizing her arm. “We’ll deal with whoever let you out later.”

Becky was about to resist when she realised; the man thought she was one of their test subjects. She allowed herself to be led down the hall and into another corridor, however this one was lined with glass fronted cells. Most contained slumped figures. Some had curtains up, so Becky couldn’t see inside. Most importantly, all the cells contained vampires; Becky could tell the moment she stepped into the room. One cell in particular stood out to her; the heavily tattooed woman curled up in the back matched Liv’s description so exactly, there was no mistaking it.

“Ruby!” Becky cried, but the figure did not stir. Before the man gripping her arm could react, Becky kicked his legs out from under him and bolted, zigzagging wildly and following the blood trail back to the long hallway she’d entered through. An alarm began to drone and the lights flashed on and off as a crackly voice announced a breach over a loudspeaker. Becky practically fell through the tapestry, grabbing Carmella’s wrist and hauling her to her feet.

“We’ve got to go,” Becky gasped in an undertone, and Carmella nodded. They made their way out, skirting the parishioners as they remained distracted by the old man preaching. A man standing behind the preacher caught Becky’s eye.

“They’ve got a vampire bodyguard,” Carmella acknowledged, as they slipped out the front door. “He smelled vampire on me straight away. The whole time you were gone, he was watching me.”

“We better hurry,” Becky replied grimly, breaking out into a run as they stepped out onto the street. “Whatever the fuck is going on in there, I don’t want any of us to be a part of it. I totally blew it, set off an alarm. They’ll be looking for us.”

“Oh my god, Becky,” Carmella groaned, as the car came into view. “What the hell did you see in there?”

“Once we’re somewhere safe,” Becky said darkly. “I’ll tell you.”

 


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning for The Strap™

“Liv, no!” Charlotte cried desperately, struggling to wrest the car door handle from her hands as she wept and tried wildly to wriggle out of Charlotte’s grasp. “Sasha, help me.”

Sasha locked her arms through Liv’s and bodily hauled her away from the car door and into her lap, where Liv wailed and hissed and struggled, tearing open a blood bag in her fit and splattering the entire backseat with blood. Becky felt her stomach do a tiny flip as Charlotte hissed and closed her eyes at the scent of it, her lips parted to expose the barest white glint of her fangs.

“You need to be calm for Ruby, okay?” Charlotte said, leaning in close. As soon as she mentioned Ruby’s name, Liv paused mid-flail, her cheeks red and tear stained. “If you get too upset, it might be dangerous for Ruby. I know the baby brain is screaming at you to tear everything apart and shriek as loud as you can, but you have to, for Ruby’s sake, ignore it. If you can’t, we can’t rescue Ruby.”

Liv nodded slowly, trembling slightly as she tried to compose herself. Becky watched the ordeal, perplexed.

“Baby vamps bond super strongly with the people who turn them,” Sasha explained to Becky in an undertone. “It’s why babies usually stay close or with their sire. She’ll be having a hard time coping with Ruby being in danger.”

Becky nodded; she’d forgotten just how animal vampires truly were. So deeply human, yet at the same unsettlingly primal, something more than the human measures of existence and understanding. Trying to make herself useful, Becky passed her leather jacket over to Sasha, who draped it around Liv’s shoulders. It dwarfed her, enveloping her like a cape.

“You’re a good girl,” Charlotte soothed, stroking Liv’s cheek once, briefly, before climbing back into the front seat. “We’re going to go home, and we’ll talk about all of this there. Where it’s safe.”

As Charlotte pulled away from the kerb, Liv leaned over to rest her cheek on the window, looking mournfully out into the dark from under Becky’s jacket. The car ride was mostly silent, save for a brief, anxious ripple of whispering as a police car pulled them over. Charlotte raised a hand to silence them as she rolled down the window, rolling her eyes as Becky chirped a cheerful greeting to the policeman.

“Good evening, ma’am,” the officer began, cordially, though his face dropped when he noticed the car full of bloodied women. Before he could even begin to ask why Charlotte was driving around four women covered in blood, plus an additional woman who was not covered in blood but was definitely very Irish, Charlotte blew the softest sigh out toward him, her expression gentle. Becky watched with horrified fascination as his eyes slid out of focus, and he turned, staggering back to his car.

“It’s harder if they expect it,” Sasha explained, as Becky studied the look of intense concentration on Charlotte’s face. “Easier if they find you attractive. Glamouring isn’t an exact science, but Charlotte’s good at it.”

“We got lucky,” Charlotte said in a low voice as the police car pulled away and trundled off in the opposite direction. “Not many people are so susceptible to it.”

“Wait, you lot are out here doin’ mind control and I’m only learnin’ about it now?” Becky demanded incredulously. Charlotte shook her head as she pulled back onto the road and resumed their journey.

“Not mind control. Power of suggestion. Usually isn’t that effective, but he liked me,” Charlotte shrugged, flashing her fangs in a mocking smirk. “Its a lost art.”

“Mostly only really old vamps can glamour,” Sasha explained, straining in her seat to peer out the back window and check if they were being tailed. “Police isn’t a good sign though. I was sort of hoping they’d dropped the whole murder investigation thing.”

“Sasha,” Becky said slowly. “Generally, murder investigations don’t tend to just ‘drop’.”

“I’ve been keeping an eye on the news,” Alexa added. “And they’re still at a loss as to any real suspect beyond knowing it was two different vampires because they tested DNA they found on the victims.”

“Just by virtue of being vampires, we’re all at risk,” Charlotte reminded them. “Stay vigilant, stay careful, stay hidden in The Garden. I can keep you safe there. Out here, there’s a minimal amount I can do to protect you from the world.”

Liv began to cry again, and Becky sank low in her seat. She was very aware that she’d almost forgotten about the murder investigation. As soon as they’d corralled Liv, she’d naively assumed the problem was solved; as it was, four people had still died under suspicious circumstances, and Becky had all but moved in with the perpetrators. As Liv’s sobs rung in her ears, Becky closed her eyes, and for the first time since she’d joined Charlotte and her coven, wished she was somewhere else.

 

The expectant faces of her new family, turned toward Becky like so many sunflowers seeking the sun, almost made her words catch in her throat. She sifted through the detritus in her brain, trying to piece together the most exact vision of the secret corridor in the church. The tiles were all she could think of, like rows of chipped teeth, yellowing in their grouted moorings.

“Ruby…” Liv said softly, reaching out to paw at Becky’s knee, a gentle prompt for her to continue.

“I’m sorry baby, she didn’t look so good,” Becky told her ruefully, her brows knitting as Liv silently sank into a little heap, leaning against her legs with her face hidden in Becky’s lap. She made no noise, but Becky could feel her tears seeping through her jeans. “She was asleep.”

“I doubt they’re feeding them,” Alexa murmured, deep in thought. “So we’re already on borrowed time.”

“We can’t say for sure,” Charlotte said carefully. “Becky - as much of a treasure to me as you are – is not a vampire. She wouldn’t have been able to smell how old the blood on them was.”

“She didn’t look physically hurt, just asleep,” Becky reassured Liv haltingly, stroking her hair. “We’re gonna go back and get her. I swear.”

“What if she doesn’t wake up?” Liv sniffed. Becky opened her mouth to reply, then closed it again. What if, indeed.

“After all of this, it’s gotten close to dawn. We need to rest and revisit this when we have more dark hours to investigate in. We wasted too much time today,” Charlotte said decisively, scooping Liv up with a disconcerting ease. “Come on baby. Bedtime.”

Becky watched Charlotte leave, chewing her lip with concern.

“Don’t think about it too hard,” Alexa whispered. “She’s just worried. I’ll talk to her. Try and get her to loosen up.”

Becky could not see Alexa, who bickered with Charlotte almost incessantly, doing anything to quell the anxiety that no doubt plagued Charlotte at every turn. With a shrug and a sigh, she trudged off to her own room; neither Alexa nor Charlotte’s bed appeared particularly welcoming, and Sasha, Carmella and Liv barely all fitted in the huge heap of blankets Sasha tried to pass off as a bed in her room. Becky undressed and threw herself down onto her bed, briefly contemplating the strange adjustment to the vampire day-night cycle she’d made. No doubt she’d wake up with Carmella whilst it was still daylight; they could prepare for the next steps in saving Ruby, which was sure to cheer up Charlotte. Becky turned over, trying and failing not to think of the expression on Charlotte’s face as she said they’d “wasted time”.

 

Charlotte leaned on the doorframe with a raised eyebrow, her arms crossed defensively across her chest. Alexa sat crosslegged in the middle of her bed, pretty as a doll, her face full of an almost challenging calm.

“Talk to me, Charlie,” Alexa said gently, reaching out to Charlotte with one hand. Charlotte scoffed, but she closed the door behind her and came to sit on the edge of the bed, kicking her boots off. She felt the soft dip of the mattress as Alexa crawled over to sit behind her, her breath catching as those painfully familiar hands eased her jacket off her shoulders, brushing the golden expanse of muscle across her back as they did so.

“Alexa…” Charlotte began with a sigh, trying to ignore the sudden, gnawing desire to let herself fall backward into Alexa’s arms. She stood up to wriggle out of her pants, very aware of the way Alexa’s gaze wandered down the length of her legs and crept up the inside of her thighs.

“You dug your grave with that silver spoon,” Alexa said contemplatively as Charlotte huffed in irritation. “Always having tantrums when you can’t get your way. Boohoo. So hard being a princess, a queen, somebody who has never had to reach too far for anything in her life. Now even the slightest inconvenience ruins you. You’re weak.”

Charlotte hissed angrily at Alexa as she peeled her top off, climbing onto the bed and turning her back to Alexa like a passive aggressive cat. Immediately, she felt Alexa behind her, and tried not to gasp at the soft press of her breasts against the hard, muscled plane of her back.

“We know where Ruby is. All we have to do…” Alexa paused, brushing her lips across the freckle on Charlotte’s shoulder, delighting wickedly as Charlotte leaned into her featherlight touches, already frustrated at being teased. “…Is reach out and take what we want. And you’ve always been good at that.”

Alexa gasped as the air was knocked out of her lungs, Charlotte spinning to pin her to the bed, her fangs at her throat. Alexa laughed, her mirth husky and cruel with Charlotte’s hand around her neck.

“That threat doesn’t work on me anymore,” Alexa choked out, managing to feign a pout. “Remember?”

With a sudden aggressive thrust of her own, Alexa pushed Charlotte off her, rolling them over to sit atop Charlotte’s hips. Charlotte turned her face away, grateful she’d never been quick to flush; Alexa was so horrifically smug, and yet she had cause to be. She’d barely touched her, and already Charlotte was falling apart at the seams.

“I thought we agreed we were bad for each other?” Charlotte managed to growl, her hands instinctively finding Alexa’s hips. “Oh for fuck’s sake, Lexi. You know I hate when you do this.”

“What, remind you what you’re missing?” Alexa said playfully, pulling her shirt over head. “Or is it reminding you that no matter what, no matter who’s in your bed, it’ll always be me on your mind? You used to love when I reminded you who you belonged to.”

“I made you,” Charlotte sneered, though her chest was rising and falling rapidly, her lips turning dusky rose where she’d bitten them, as though begging to be kissed. “If anything, you’re mine.”

“Let’s be each other’s,” Alexa said lazily, reaching out with one hand to link pinkies with Charlotte whilst she slipped the other just below the waistband of Charlotte’s underwear, tracing her initials on that secret spot just below the hipbone where the veins sing close to the surface. Charlotte could only manage a muffled moan in response, her hips trembling, her thighs parted.

“Alexa…” Charlotte whispered. “Please.”

“Your whole body is practically begging with all it has, every beautiful inch, but you still want to keep up the pretence of saying please?” Alexa said scornfully, trailing a finger up the defined musculature of Charlotte’s abs, pausing between her ribs. “You know how this goes.”

“I know how this goes,” Charlotte repeated dreamily, already lost in Alexa’s eyes, in her promises, in her voice. Charlotte sat up and carefully unclipped her bra as Alexa did the same, letting out a shy, embarrassed little laugh at Alexa reached out to touch one of her nipples, her fingers tracing the piercing carefully.

“Last time you were just wearing plain old silver,” Alexa said. “Who are you trying to impress with the rose gold upgrade?”

Charlotte looked down, letting her blonde hair fall in a softly curling curtain that conveniently hid her embarrassment. Alexa shrugged; the pink gold complemented Charlotte’s tanned skin wonderfully; she wasn’t about to complain. As she stood up to wriggle out of her underwear, she noted with satisfaction that Charlotte still knew the routine; Alexa liked to play with Charlotte’s toys. Her favourite? The strap-on Charlotte kept in the drawer beside her bed. Alexa briefly wondered how much action it had seen since she last slept with Charlotte, but shook the thought away with jealous irritation.

“I’ll never get over it being pink. And sparkly,” Alexa laughed, batting at the toy as Charlotte swiped a handful of lube over the glittery surface.

“I couldn’t care less what colour it is, so long as it still makes you make those noises,” Charlotte teased. “You sure you don’t wanna warm up a little?”

Alexa was already pushing her over onto her back and straddling Charlotte, waiting patiently as Charlotte carefully slipped the very tip of the toy inside her.

“Oh god Charlotte- no, I don’t need to warm up,” Alexa breathed. “Make me come.”

Charlotte nodded, grasping Alexa’s hips and slowly pulling her closer as she slid into her, Alexa letting out a long, shuddering groan of satisfaction, tilting her head back and letting the golden mane of her hair spill down her back in a pale cascade.

Becky gasped in the dark, the sound of lovers in the next room flooding her with an almost jealous want. It took her a moment to recognise the sounds of Alexa’s pleasure, though she recognized the soft, appreciative moan of Charlotte immediately.

Charlotte reached up to gently brush her fingertips against one of Alexa’s breasts, her breath catching as Alexa found her rhythm, letting out the sweetest little gasps with every stroke as she rode her.

Almost guiltily, Becky spread her legs, sliding one hand into her underwear. She could feel herself flush in the dark as she realised how wet she was. Becky knew herself she was attracted to Charlotte. She was attracted to Alexa. She had not considered Charlotte AND Alexa.

Charlotte could barely breathe, lost in the sight of Alexa on top of her, her fangs glinting in the light as she groaned with want, slamming her hips so hard against Charlotte that Charlotte might have worried she’d hurt herself if she wasn’t so familiar with exactly how Alexa liked to get herself off.

Becky found herself desperately bucking her hips into her own touch, frustrated, unable to quite touch herself the way she wanted to be touched, unable to feel the same depth of carnal satisfaction that Alexa, from the sounds of things, was experiencing in Charlotte’s room.

Alexa’s back arched, and she tipped forward, bracing her hands against Charlotte as she fucked herself to a feverish, gasping, squeal. Charlotte, knowing her cue, neatly pulled Alexa close and rolled her over, pinning her underneath her.

“What are you doi-“ Alexa began breathily before Charlotte thrust into her once again, panting heavily as she increased her pace and aggression. The bed rattle against the wall.

Becky heard Alexa cry out, then felt the unmistakable thud of somebody being pounded into the mattress. Privately, Becky wished that were her; she dreamed it in full colour as she teased herself to her own peak, imagining her fingers were Charlotte’s, or Alexa’s, or Charlotte’s, or Alexa’s, breathing each name in turn, quivering under every stroke.

“Becky thinks your noises are cute too,” Charlotte murmured, leaning to whisper in Alexa’s as Alexa threw her arms about her neck and aggressively dug her nails into her shoulders.

“Fuck me Charlotte,” Alexa half sobbed, and Charlotte quietly made a personal note to remember that Alexa seemed to like being overheard. “Fuck me harder. Make me come. Make me come, come on baby girl, make me-“

Alexa’s tone shifting from demanding to pleading was enough to make Charlotte shiver with a sudden frisson of desire, as she continued to oblige to Alexa’s demands, letting out a loud moan of her own as Alexa’s hands tangled roughly in her hair.

Becky swore loudly under her breath, straining hard against her own touch, desperate for more, for the hot, maddening pressure of a body on top of her, the insistent push of being taken by somebody else, trying to dream her own caress into Charlotte’s. Charlotte; Becky remembered when Charlotte had bitten her and she’d come undone in her arms, the sharp pressure, the pain, the warm of her own blood as it trickled down Charlotte’s neck and splattered her breasts-

She felt the sudden resistance to the push of her hips as Alexa’s thighs tightened around her, and her half-garbled demands rose to a shriek that was half Charlotte’s name, half a “yes”.

“Charlotte-“ Becky groaned aloud before she could stop herself, a wave of bizarre ambrosial warmth swallowing her as tremors consumed her being.

Charlotte gently continued, letting the pressure ebb until Alexa came down, trembling. Alexa clung to her for only a moment, sitting up as though unaffected, though Charlotte could see beyond the bravado; Alexa still quivered, her cheeks very very pink.

“Good girl,” Alexa told her, ruffling her hair as Charlotte gently extricated herself from the straps of the toy. “You sure you don’t wanna keep that on and go deal with Becky?”

“I’m almost tempted to,” Charlotte said, a teasing note in her voice as she climbed back onto the bed and let Alexa push her over backward. “But I know the deal. Now I’m yours to do what you want with.”

Alexa just laughed at her.

“Sweetheart, you’re always mine to do what I want with.”


	14. Chapter 14

_Alexa_.

Charlotte studied the soft ripple of Alexa’s spine where the duvet had slipped down, her piercings glittering like two little dimples in the dark.

 _Alexa_.

Charlotte willed her to turn over, to envelop her in an embrace, to tell her she was a good girl who had done very well, to shower her with kisses.

Charlotte willed her to love her again.

Alexa slept on, as oblivious to Charlotte as she was to the first fingers of dawn trying to find the gaps in the drapes and push glisters of golden, scalding morning into the room. Charlotte sighed and sat up, letting the blanket pool around her as she looked around the room contemplatively; the cold space between her and Alexa after sex had never been unfamiliar to her. Charlotte liked to be held, appreciated, lulled to sleep with romance and sweet nothings after giving herself to somebody. Alexa? Alexa preferred to be left alone. With a soft, disappointed sigh, Charlotte swung her legs out of the bed and got up, quietly making her way to the door and easing her way out. She paused outside of Becky’s bedroom for so long she was sure it’d be almost sun-up by the time she actually summoned up the courage to move, but when Charlotte pushed the door open, she found only a little morning sunlight was beginning to spill through the window. Carefully, so as not to catch herself in the sunlight, Charlotte drew the curtains and sat on the end of Becky’s bed.

“Becky?”

“Hey Charlie,” Becky croaked, her voice raspy with sleep. She sat up and pulled the blanket to the side, politely trying not to acknowledge Charlotte’s nakedness. “In you get.”

“Thank you,” Charlotte murmured, sliding between the sheets and settling in beside Becky, who immediately turned to curl around her, her face buried in Charlotte’s hair. Charlotte had to smile slightly at being the little spoon, Becky’s legs tangled with hers as one of Becky’s hands rested on her hipbone, her thumb tracing slow circles into the furrow there with a sleepy reverence.

“I’m sorry,” Charlotte breathed, closing her eyes as she felt Becky press a cozy kiss to her shoulder.

“No sorries, I’m always here. You know that. Now go to sleep,” Becky replied through a yawn. Charlotte nodded; of all the people who had ever promised they’d always be there, Becky might have been the only one she ever truly believed.

 

Becky woke up in the dark, exhaling sharply in surprise as she felt the cold, foreign weight of a body next to her. The smell of altar incense and the fluffy blonde hair spilling onto her pillow triggered Becky’s memory; of course, Charlotte had come to her bed in the night. Becky rolled over in Charlotte’s embrace to look at her, her patrician features gentled by the pall of sleep. Her eyelashes cast long shadows onto her cheeks, her full lips parted slightly as though she was mid-whisper; in repose, she seemed seraphic, golden and holy. Becky’s heart thudded, maddened to a hare’s pace by beauty and stirred wild with sharp conflict. Part of her was delighted Charlotte had sought her out to hold, to love, to expose her vulnerability to, but the cynical part of her mind coldly reminded her that Charlotte had slept with Alexa and Becky was just picking up the pieces. Becky had only been second best, a warm body when Alexa had used Charlotte for what she wanted and cast her aside, unprepared to pick up the pieces of a woman who couldn’t love in small doses.

“I love you,” Becky said firmly to Charlotte’s sleeping form, knowing there was no rousing a vampire asleep for the day. “But you’re a self-absorbed cunt sometimes.”

Charlotte didn’t stir, even as Becky leaned in to press the softest, gentlest kiss to her lips before sitting up and climbing out of bed.

As she shuffled through to the kitchen in a pair of fluffy slippers stolen from Carmella, she sighed.

“Charlotte and Alexa keep you up all night too?” Carmella asked, sitting at the table with her MacBook, sipping a coffee. “This is what I meant when I told you she’s easy to fall in love with, but a lot of effort to love.”

“I guess this means her and Alexa are together again?” Becky asked, dejected as she sat down heavily beside Carmella. “What are you reading?”

“Oh god no. This is just... what they do,” Carmella shrugged. “Charlotte needs to be loved back; the way I see it, sex is the closest she’s ever gonna get to love from Alexa ever again. She’ll take what she can get. And I’m reading about the church we went to. I’m trying to find more info on the actual building.”

“She’s still in love with Alexa?” Becky prompted, getting up to make a cup of tea.

“You’d have to talk to her about it,” Carmella said primly. “It’s her business. Go get some breakfast to wake yourself up, then come help me try and figure out this floor map I found.”

Becky nodded and busied herself at the stove, taking sips of tea between hassling the bacon and eggs she soon had sizzling in a pan.

“Thank god for urban regeneration,” Carmella sighed as Becky sat down with a plateful of food. “I found a complete floor plan. Turns out the city council were hoping to have the place listed on the NRHP, made a whole restoration project pitch and plan, but couldn’t get the funding. That’s where St Philomena’s came in; they bought the building over as a private company, fixed the roof, and as we saw when we visited, made a few... additions back in 2014.”

“So what does that mean?” Becky asked, her mouth full of bacon.

“It means we’re not going in blind. The floor plan doesn’t have anything like the scale of corridors you described, but there was definitely a cellar and at least one passageway between the church and the vicarage marked out as having fallen in. They must have built from there.”

“Now you mention it,” Becky said thoughtfully. “I remember some parts of the hallways being on a slope. Do you think they built all this stuff underground?”

“That’s exactly what I think,” Carmella replied. “And to get to Ruby, we’re gonna have to try figure out just how deep this thing goes.”

Becky nodded, chewing absentmindedly as Carmella clicked and tapped away in the background.

“Becky...” Carmella prodded gently. “What... what were they doing down there?”

“I don’t know,” Becky admitted. “But it was nothin’ good. They had whole hallways that were pitch dark, and others where all the folks were hooked up to IVs, and others where everybody was asleep, and probably more besides. I was just lookin’ for Ruby. I didn’t stop to check.”

“I didn’t wanna say it in front of Liv, but...” Carmella paused, leaning in as though afraid the vampires might hear her. “It sounds like they’re doing some kind of... experimentation. They do call themselves a research-focused order. I wonder what they’re doing in there.”

“Didn’t Charlotte say all the experimentin’ and stuff ended way back?” Becky asked.

“The government funded stuff did, at least,” Carmella shrugged. “This... this is something different.”

“If they’re experimentin’, they must have a lot of people to use as lab rats,” Becky said slowly, beginning to piece together an idea in her mind. “Missin’ persons cases; maybe it’s a good place to start lookin’ to try and figure out what the fuck’s goin’ on down there.”

Becky bit her lip worriedly. If they had enough vampires to warrant a whole warren of tunnels full of cells, just how many people did they have down there?

 

Dusk hung low across the pastels of suburbia in a strange, orange wash that made each shadow somehow longer and more foreboding than the last. Liv bristled, her hands twisting in her lap as she gazed out of the window, her face ablaze with a determined passion. She had been the first of the vampires to wake up, and she hadn’t stopped asking about Ruby the moment she’d come through to the kitchen. Charlotte shuffled through behind her, all legs in a pair of Becky’s shorts and an oversized t-shirt she’d scavenged from Becky’s room. She immediately sat at the table and began absentmindedly sucking on a bloodbag Carmella handed her, expression vacant.

“You’re still half asleep,” Becky laughed, sitting down beside her and looping an arm round her waist. “My clothes look good on you.”

“I’ll steal from you more often,” Charlotte replied dreamily, rubbing her eyes and yawning expansively as she tried to shake off the last vestiges of sleep, resting her head on Becky’s shoulder. Across from her, Liv fidgeted, clearly frustrated; now was not the time to be vulnerable, not when Ruby needed them. Now was not the time to doze and smile sleepily. Liv’s train of thought was interrupted as Alexa strode into the room, dressed and awake, casting Charlotte a look of disdain as she swept to the fridge to find breakfast. Sasha followed shortly after, wearing her duvet like a cape.

“So,” Sasha said through a yawn. “What’s the plan?”

The women collectively looked to Charlotte, the softness of sleep quickly dispersing as her brows knitted into a thoughtful furrow.

“We don’t have time to sit around and eat breakfast,” Liv piped angrily, standing up so suddenly she knocked over Becky’s mug of tea. “Ruby needs us.”

“We can’t just burst in there, baby,” Charlotte said, placing a hand on Liv’s arm in an effort to soothe her. “It’d make it more dangerous for Ruby.”

Liv shook her off and began to pace, agitated, her pink curls bouncing with every step.

“But she’s there now, all by herself! She’s already in danger!” Liv fumed, gesturing out the window at the twilight sky. “She’s needed us for weeks and nobody’s doing anything! We know where she is, let’s go get her!”

“It’s not as simple as that,” Becky said gruffly, clearly unsettled by Liv’s distress. “We might put her in more danger, or the other captives in danger, if we just go runnin’ in, guns blazin’.”

Liv, looking around the room mutinously, had started to cry. She opened her mouth to say something else, thought better of it, and stormed from the room, letting the door slam behind her with such aggression that it was almost torn from the hinges.

“I hate when she does that,” Sasha said softly, adjusting her blanket cape. “She’s so cute, but man... those tantrums.”

“You know what to do, mommy,” Alexa told Charlotte mockingly, jerking her head in the direction of the door. “Go explain to your brat that she’s being unreasonable.”

“Don’t be cruel, Alexa,” Becky said softly, gazing thoughtfully at the door. Alexa’s face fell, but she quickly rearranged her features from crestfallen to contemptuous. Charlotte, suddenly composed, cold and expressionless, merely shook her head.

“I’m giving her time to cool off,” Charlotte replied, her tone clipped. Fresh-faced with her hair swept up into a messy bun, and garbed in a horrifying “kiss me, I’m Irish” t-shirt somebody had gifted Becky last St Patrick’s Day, Charlotte did not exactly look the image of a vampire queen. However, she still managed to radiate a deeply regal energy, and Becky found herself enchanted by her once again, forgetting her irritation at the awkward position Charlotte and Alexa had put her in. Even Alexa seemed slightly cowed by the frostiness of Charlotte’s tone.

“Probably a good idea,” Carmella agreed. “She’s pretty uh... volatile.”

“I’ll go sit with her,” Sasha volunteered. “Get her to eat some breakfast and play some video games.”

Sasha shambled out of the kitchen, still encased in her duvet. She reappeared moments later, minus her blanket, looking pale.

“Liv’s gone.”


	15. Chapter 15

Following the blood had, as Charlotte had suspected, led them directly to the church. The door creaked open, so loud against the balmy quiet of the evening that Becky jumped, looking around sheepishly to check if anybody noticed. The insipid orange light of the street outside filtered through the gap, casting a long beam, thick with dust motes, across the pews.

“Nobody’s here,” Carmella whispered, but Sasha shook her head, pointing to a twisted heap of human remains by the tapestry Becky had found the doorway behind.

“There was somebody guarding the door,” Alexa murmured. “Looks like Liv made short work of them.”

Becky swallowed, tying not to look at the butchered mess congealing into the threadbare carpet.

“That’s not just Liv’s work,” Charlotte said quietly, sweeping the tapestry aside so casually that one would be forgiven for assuming she stepped over mutilated bodies regularly. “Those aren’t all vamp wounds.”

“What do you mean?” Becky asked, but Charlotte simply raised a finger to her lips and carefully tried the door. To nobody’s surprise, the entire locking mechanism had been torn from the door, and it swung wide with ease. After a few seconds, the lights in the corridor hummed to life, illuminating two bloody sets of footprints. One set was clearly Liv’s; Charlotte could recognise the familiar pattern of her favourite sneakers anywhere. The other was distinctly animal, far too big to be a dog, but not the right shape to be a bear.

“What the fuck?” Becky pointed to the pawprints, nonplussed, but nobody acknowledged her.

“At least she made it easy to follow her,” Carmella said quietly, and Alexa nodded. The group slowly followed the gory tracks, pausing at every corner to listen for potential attackers. Every now and again, they’d come across another corpse in a lab coat, though identifying that the heaps of torn flesh and viscera were even human was a challenge.

“How does she know the way?” Carmella asked. “Becky found Ruby by sheer luck. I know vampires have a better sense of smell than humans, but this good?”

“She brought a sniffer dog,” Charlotte said, curling her lip. “I’d wondered when Sarah would show up.”

“Werewolf,” Sasha translated, seeing Becky’s expression.

“You’re fuckin’ kiddin’ me,” Becky groaned.

“Nope,” Alexa said grimly. “Not as... sociable as vampires. Don’t see them often. But they’re out there.”

“Speaking of,” Charlotte said carefully. “Sarah’s met me, but she doesn’t know any of you. Let me deal with her.”

The group nodded hurriedly; Becky had no idea what to expect from her first encounter with a werewolf, but she had no desire to charge headlong into battle with one. Dutifully, the group continued through the unsettlingly sterile, white corridors, marred only by the strangely alien flourishes of blood, and footprints. Here and there, thick tufts of fur had caught on corners and door handles. They passed the strange, dark corridors Becky had mentioned, trailed down long corridors of sleeping vampires, passed down hallways lined with cells with humans that seemed in a deep unconsciousness, all the while following the bloody trail Liv had left them. Eventually, they reached the double doors Becky recognised from her first visit to the church.

“Ruby’s through there,” Becky said quietly, and Charlotte nodded. “But the first time I was here, they set off an alarm, which was why I had to run. How come nobody’s noticed Liv?”

“It looks like they weren’t expecting us to come back so soon. She’s killed everybody she’s come across before they had the chance to raise the alarm. The security cameras are all unmanned, too,” Charlotte replied, gesturing at the blinking red light in the corner of the hallway. “I’d imagine there’s either nobody watching the cameras, or there was, and Liv... dealt with them.”

“No point standing about talking,” Alexa cut in. “She’ll have heard us anyway. Let’s go get Ruby.”

The group murmured their agreement, and Charlotte tentatively pushed the door open, only to be confronted with carnage. The walls were strewn with blood and organs, streaks of mucous and gore spread across the glass fronted cells, though the vampires inside slept peacefully. Liv sat in the middle of it all, crying as she beat at the glass of Ruby’s cell, her little fists bruising dark with her insistent pounding. Slowly, Charlotte sat down behind Liv and took hold of her wrists, wrapping them around her and pulling her into a tight embrace.

“I’m here, baby,” Charlotte murmured, though she rested one hand against the glass and Becky couldn’t be sure if she was speaking to Liv or Ruby.

“S-Sarah,” Liv began, hiccoughing. “Went to try and find a release for the door. We can’t get in.”

“We’ll get in,” Charlotte reassured her. “How did Sarah find you?”

“I went back to where we’d been hiding in the woods. I cut myself and left her a trail to follow. She met up with me just before I got here,” Liv explained, trying to compose herself and rubbing her tears away with her fist. A low growl that seemed to run so deep it reverberated through the floor tiles disrupted the reunion, and Becky cried out in fright when she looked up to see the enormous, hulking mass of a wolf standing at the other end of the hallway, lips drawing back over bonewhite teeth as long as her fingers. The creature bristled, hackles raised, tense and coiled as though ready to spring at them at a moment’s notice.

“Hey Sarah,” Charlotte said, extending her hand, and to Becky’s surprise, the huge creature began to wag its enormous brush tail ridiculously, bounding over like an excitable puppy. “Glad you remember me.”

The wolf huffed happily in response, snuffing at Charlotte’s clothes and sticking its muzzle into the crook of her arm like some kind of facsimile of an embrace. Becky watched with confused horror as the wolf licked Liv’s face, blowing soft snuffling sounds into her hair, Liv squealing with laughter and throwing her arms around the wolf’s neck.

“Did you find a door release?” Charlotte asked, and the wolf whined, ears drooping to indicate no. “In that case, we’ll just have to brute force it.”

“You and Carmella might want to back off,” Sasha advised as Liv and Charlotte got to their feet. “I can see glass getting absolutely everywhere.”

Becky and Carmella swiftly moved to the side, watching as the vampires lined up beside the wolf. On Charlotte’s count of three, they all kicked the glass with all their might, and the wolf bodyslammed the pane with such force that Becky swore she felt the walls shake. A long, thin crack erupted across the glass, splitting into tiny hairline fractures as it spread. Almost instantly, the fluorescent white lights dimmed to red, and the alarm that had caught Becky out on her last visit began to drone so loudly, she had to clap her hands over her ears.

“Must be triggered by damage to the cells,” Carmella yelled over the noise, recoiling as the group landed yet another blow, splitting the glass into a wide spiderweb of cracks before it finally shattered.

“We’ll get Ruby and go,” Charlotte instructed, moving to scoop Ruby up as though she weighed nothing. “We don’t have time to save anybody else.”

“But that’s not right!” Becky exploded, grabbing Charlotte’s arm as she gestured back at the rows of cells. “You can’t just leave them!”

“If we don’t, we’ll die down here,” Alexa told her, shoving her hard and breaking her grip on Charlotte. “We don’t have long before whoever deals with this stupid alarm comes to see what the fuss is about.”

Becky let out a roar of frustration, kicking a shard of glass that still clung to the frame of Ruby’s cell, but followed nonetheless, sparing a single glance back at the hallway, illuminated in red like some strange, hellish route to the underworld, a memory of a bad dream.

 

“Will she wake up?” Becky asked Charlotte, as they watched Liv and Alexa painstakingly drip the contents of blood bag after blood bag into Ruby’s mouth. Sarah watched from the corner with a scowl, her arms crossed. Becky almost missed the wagging tail and lolloping gait of her wolf form.

“Can’t say,” Charlotte replied in an undertone. “They haven’t been feeding her.”

“What now?” Sasha murmured, watching the proceedings with a furrowed brow.

“We try to wake Ruby up, we hope they don’t retaliate, we stay low,” Charlotte said briskly. “If they spin this the way I expect them to, being a vampire openly won’t really be much of an option.”

“What do you mean? Surely they can’t go to the police. They were experimentin’ on people!” Becky looked from Sasha to Charlotte with confusion.

“They were experimenting on vampires,” Sasha corrected. “Dunno if you’ve noticed, but we don’t really have rights, and the law isn’t exactly on our side.”

“We already have four murders under our belt. We’re about to have... uh... a few more attributed to us as well,” Charlotte reasoned. “We’re not exactly model citizens.”

“You fell asleep after Ale-, I mean, after all that stuff a while back,” Sasha began, choosing her words carefully as Charlotte blazed at her silently. “And you woke up. So I think Ruby will wake up too. Then we can figure out where we go from here.”

“We can’t close The Garden, as much as I’d like to; too conspicuous. However, we’re going to have to make sure somebody is with her at all times,” Charlotte said, ignoring Sasha’s remark about Alexa. “I don’t want any of you down in the bar.”

“What about me?” Becky asked. Working the bar was the one thing that made her feel useful.

“You’ve been into St Philomena’s twice. If they don’t have some good security footage of your face, I’d be surprised,” Charlotte said coolly. “They’re going to want rid of you. I need to keep you safe.”

Becky nodded glumly.

“Looks like you’re stuck up here with the rest of us,” Sasha sighed, ruffling Becky’s hair.

“I am so sick of the sight of this flat you wouldn’t believe it,” Becky groaned, but Charlotte ignored her, moving to pick Ruby up and carry her through to Liv’s bed, Liv and Sarah following. Becky was beginning to go stir crazy; she’d barely left The Garden since Charlotte had taken her in, and the occasional trips to the all night supermarket were not enough to stay her desire to get out and experience something beyond the achingly familiar walls of the home Charlotte had built for her.

“Becky,” Charlotte’s voice interrupted Becky’s train of thought. “Come to bed with me. I’m tired and hungry.”

Becky wanted to tell Charlotte no, wanted to tell her she wasn’t just a stand in for when Alexa wouldn’t give her what she wanted, wanted to resist the irresistible. But she couldn’t; dutifully, she followed Charlotte through to her bedroom and sat on her bed. Alexa leaned against the doorframe, watching with raised eyebrows.

“What are you doing, Charlotte?” Alexa’s voice was silky and dangerous.

“Feeding and going to bed,” Charlotte replied flatly, sitting at her dressing table and arranging her cosmetics in preparation to begin removing her makeup. Becky could hear Carmella and Sasha arguing in the hallway about which Soul Caliber they were going to play.

“I really do hope, for your sake and Becky’s, that you’re not trying to make me jealous,” Alexa said delicately, entering the room and closing the door behind her. “Because that would just be too pathetic.”

“Do you, uh, want me to go, or...?” Becky asked, shifting awkwardly.

“No,” Charlotte said, rising from her seat and striding across the room to stare down Alexa. “Alexa was just leaving.”

“So you are trying to make me jealous,” Alexa said smugly, refusing to back off in the face of Charlotte’s cold, pale fury.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Becky cried angrily, and both Alexa and Charlotte turned to look at her in surprise. “I’m not a fuckin’ toy! You two can’t just use me to play me off against the other. Go to fuckin’ couples therapy, or decide what you’re doin’ with me because I don’t have time to be a pawn in your bullshit.”

Alexa and Charlotte exchanged a look.

“It’s more complicated than that,” Charlotte said softly. “I want Alexa. Alexa doesn’t want me.”

Alexa rolled her eyes as Charlotte’s voice cracked.

“But we both want you,” Alexa finished, smirking slightly as Becky’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. She looked to Charlotte for confirmation, who wore an expression distinctly like that of a guilty Labrador. Becky looked between them, before shrugging and pulling her shirt off.

“Do what you want. Might make my time cooped up in here a little more excitin’,” Becky said wryly, trying to keep the tremor out of her voice. She had been torn between Alexa and Charlotte for weeks, finding herself falling for both women, lusting after them in equal measure. Maybe letting them both have her was the best outcome for all three.

In fact, Becky thought to herself as she felt Alexa’s fangs pierce her neck whilst Charlotte’s punctured her chest, letting both have her was definitely the best outcome.

 

Alexa moved to sit beside Charlotte, looping an arm around her and resting her head on her shoulder as she played with her hair, Charlotte leaning into her touch. Haltingly, Becky sat up and gently pushed Charlotte back into the pillows, sliding her hands up Charlotte’s shirt with a cautious want.

“Please?” Becky asked, looking between Charlotte and Alexa for permission, her eyes dark with heady lust.

“Undress for her,” Alexa told Charlotte, brushing her golden hair out of her eyes before bending to kiss her briefly, as though her kiss granted permission. Charlotte, looking up at Alexa with an almost pious adoration in her blood drunkenness, nodded slowly and complied. Becky held her breath, letting out a soft gasp as Charlotte exposed her perfect torso, golden and lean, as precisely formed as a sculptor’s dream of beauty in strength. As Charlotte disrobed, Becky could only look at her in awe, her heart racing, though she raised her eyebrows slightly when Charlotte removed her bra to expose pierced nipples, the titanium glinting starkly against her golden skin.

“Can I touch you?” Becky managed to whisper, her mouth turning dry at the sight before her.

“Don’t ask me,” Charlotte said softly, biting her lip as she reached up to stroke Alexa’s cheek.

“Can I touch her?” Becky asked Alexa, and Alexa nodded graciously, bending to kiss Charlotte aggressively as Becky’s hands wandered across the defined furrows of Charlotte’s hips, across the perfect chiselled plane of her abs, seeking secrets in every freckle and gap between her ribs. Almost instinctively, Becky let her hand drift downward to spread Charlotte’s thighs further, her breath catching as her fingertips brushed her and came away glistening with honeyed desire, before being pushed back abruptly by Alexa.

“You can touch her anywhere else,” Alexa said. “But that’s mine.”

Charlotte let out a moan of desperation and disappointment, her hips jolting at Becky’s touch. Becky could only shake her head and press an apologetic kiss to Charlotte’s thigh that only served to incense her further.

“Lexi don’t be mean,” she whined, sitting up to rest on her elbows. “I want you to share.”

“Don’t be impatient,” Alexa replied, mimicking Charlotte’s petulant tone, trying not to smirk; Charlotte’s shift from protective, murderous force of nature to bratty princess never ceased to amaze Alexa. “Becky has to earn it if she wants me to share.”

Becky traced the contours of Charlotte’s body upward, her fingers climbing the ripple of her rib cage like harp strings, rising to cup the soft swell of her breasts with both hands as she left a sweet, bruising kiss on Charlotte’s neck in a cruel mimicry of the bite Charlotte had administered earlier. Becky’s bites had started to bleed again, and Charlotte looked at her with an almost frightening hunger, lazily tense beneath her like some big cat preparing to uncoil and strike. There was a moment of almost breathtaking silence as a single rivulet of blood crept across Becky’s chest, beading berry bright on her breast, before dripping onto Charlotte as a rubid spatter. Some primitive part of Becky’s brain told her she was in terrible, awful danger, two examples of the ultimate predator pressed close to her. Alexa bent to lick the blood from Charlotte’s breasts, and as Charlotte tilted her head back, her rosy lips parted in a groan, Becky could clearly see the lethal, violent points of her fangs. It was strange to think they’d been inside her, the most cruel and intimate mockery of a kiss, a flourish like a signature reminding the world that she’d been Charlotte’s, and Charlotte’s alone, for those few minutes. And then, a few moments later, she had become Alexa’s, a shared communion between the two vampires, a private secret for three, each so intrinsically linked that they couldn’t be extricated from one another.

“Am I yours now?” Becky asked Alexa, resting her head on Charlotte’s perfectly flat stomach, trailing her fingers along the bluish pathway of the veins by her hipbone.

“As much as Charlotte wants to play with you by herself, we’ve decided to share,” Alexa replied, watching as Charlotte sat up to lap at Becky’s neck again, draping her arms around her shoulders. “You’re ours.”

Becky nodded; in the hazy heat of Charlotte’s bed, tangled in Alexa and Charlotte, belonging to them seemed natural. Bowing to Charlotte’s hunger, and Alexa’s whims, was second nature in the warm, secret moments in the dark. Becky forgot that Alexa had trembled with apprehension whilst she fed from her for the first time; the moment a demand was made, the instinct was to oblige, utterly. And Charlotte, for all she was huge and leonine, impossibly beautiful, vital and frightening, obliged with every atom of her being. Her body was made to oblige, her breasts soft and yielding, her thighs spread easily with a graceful athleticism, her entire form seemed sculpted to bend to the whims to whoever held her heart in their hands. Wherever you touched her, she flushed and responded, her lips always plush and parted as though awaiting a kiss, her eyes always half-dreamy and full of a promise so lascivious that it made Becky blush to even think about. She was a woman made to indulge in, to love, to savour, made to appreciate from above or beneath, worshipped like an idol or treasured and fussed over like a sweet pet, to be ravaged by or to love brutally with hard strokes and bruising fingertips and bloody lips. With a sudden movement that took Becky by surprise, Charlotte rolled her over, straddling her waist so Becky was pinned beneath her and their positions were reversed. Charlotte pawed at her, sweet and gentle, learning Becky with her hands, her lips drifting back to Becky’s wounds to lick the blood from her body. Becky tried to stifle a soft moan as she felt the velvety seal of Charlotte’s lips against her skin, the soft sucking sound as Charlotte fed from her rising gooseflesh across her chest.

“Charlotte was right,” Alexa said, an eyebrow raised. “You do like being fed from.”

“It feels like nothin’ I’ve ever felt before,” Becky groaned, as Charlotte’s hunger intensified and she fed from her more aggressively, her back arching almost animalistically over Becky. “It’s... like she’s inside me, but more than that.”

Becky noted that as she spoke, Alexa had moved to sit between Becky’s legs, behind Charlotte, tracing soft patterns with her fingertips on the small of Charlotte’s back.

“How much more can you take?” Alexa asked, gently spreading Charlotte’s thighs from behind. Charlotte obliged almost automatically, smoothly adjusting herself to grant Alexa access without breaking her hold on Becky. Becky glanced at Charlotte briefly, meeting her eyes; Charlotte winked at her, and Becky shivered.

“I can take however much you wanna give me,” Becky breathed, unsure of what Alexa was building up to. Alexa shrugged, before slowly - painfully slowly - sliding her fingers into Charlotte from behind. Charlotte responded with a throaty groan of satisfaction, biting down hard on Becky’s neck and piercing her once again with her fangs. Becky cried out in a combination of ecstasy and surprise, clawing at the broad anchor of Charlotte’s shoulders as she arched her back and leaned into Charlotte, spreading her legs as Charlotte carefully unbuttoned her pants with one hand, holding herself up against Becky with the other.

“Make her come, Charlotte,” Alexa instructed, smiling with satisfaction as Charlotte moaned a muffled agreement. Alexa swallowed, bracing herself against Charlotte with every stroke; the velvet warmth of her was dizzying, and Alexa remembered exactly where to focus her attention to get the most from Charlotte. By the time Charlotte slipped her hand into Becky’s underwear and felt the extent of her yearning, she was close to coming undone, breaking her hold to gasp against Becky’s bloody shoulder, moaning Becky and Alexa’s name each in turn. Becky might’ve found the vision of Charlotte panting “Becky, Lexi, Becky, Lexi” over and over again like a prayer funny, if Charlotte’s fingertips hadn’t found her sweet spot, teasing out a long, laboured, breathy stammering of Charlotte’s name. Alexa simply smiled to herself, surveying the disarray before her, swearing quietly to herself as she felt the familiar pressure of a quickening building around her fingers, Charlotte riding out the ache with an almost desperate intensity.

“Please Lexi,” Charlotte begged, her composure gone as she struggled to cling to her last vestiges of resolve. “Please let me come, please let me come, please.”

“Good girls,” Alexa cooed. “You have my permission to come.”

Alexa laughed softly as Charlotte almost immediately collapsed onto Becky upon being granted permission, Becky reaching her peak beneath her, frantically pleading “don’t stop” over and over whilst Charlotte lovingly laved her tongue across the scarlet wounds her fangs had left behind. As quickly as it had begun, it seemed to slow and stop.

“I have to stop,” Charlotte gasped, shuddering into a groan as Alexa slowly withdrew her fingers, Becky looking dazed beneath her as orgasm ebbed away. “You’ll die of blood loss if I don’t.”

“Surely you didn’t take that much,” Becky reasoned, gingerly trying to sit up and immediately being struck with a headrush that sent her back onto the pillows.

“You did good,” Alexa told her, wriggling under the duvet beside her and resting her head on Becky’s shoulder. Becky wrapped an arm around Alexa and pulled her close, rapidly becoming aware of just how dizzy she was without the distraction of Charlotte on top of her. Charlotte paused hesitantly for a few seconds before she clambered under the blankets on Becky’s other side and wrapped her arms around both of them.

“Benefits of dating tall girls,” Alexa said sagely. “Her arms are long enough to hug both of her girlfriends at once.”

“Girlfriends?” Charlotte mumbled sleepily, still managing to summon a sardonic edge to her voice even in her weakened state. “Very presumptuous of you.”

“Ugh, you know what I mean,” Alexa replied, curling up under the duvet like a little dog. Becky said nothing, still reeling from a wild combination of blood loss and orgasm. Girlfriends. She liked that. Why have one human girlfriend when you could have two vampire ones? In the moment Charlotte had paused, her breasts and thighs and face slick with blood and Becky, she had somehow managed to be the most beautiful, most frightening, most decadent thing she’d ever seen, almost repugnant in the loveliness of her wild gore, the recklessly sensual beauty of her patrician features. And Alexa, curled up beside her with the ghost of a smile playing at the corners of her mouth, so delicate she might have been made from glass, with the same kind of beauty as spring flowers, barely holding together. Between them, Becky felt strangely at peace, though a wave of nausea crashed over her every time she moved.

“Charlotte drank too much,” Alexa explained, seeing the cold sweat breaking out on Becky’s forehead. “You should be okay, but you’re going to feel like shit for a few days.”

Becky could only murmur an agreement; she was fairly sure if she tried to nod, she’d vomit in Charlotte’s bed.

“I’m sorry,” Charlotte said softly, to both Becky and Alexa, as she played with a stray strand of Becky’s hair.

“No, don’t apologise,” Becky grunted, shifting slightly and wincing in pain. A terrible headache had quickly set in. “It was... amazin’. Really. If you could do it again without killin’ me, I’d ask you to.”

Charlotte and Alexa exchanged a look.

“Next time, if Charlotte doesn’t decide to treat you like an all-you-can-eat buffet,” Alexa’s time was reproving. “You can go as many times as you want, but we can’t feed from you every time.”

“Why not?” Becky asked. “That’s... part of what makes it so intense.”

“You need time to regenerate all that blood we drink, idiot,” Alexa sighed. “It doesn’t all come back overnight.”

Becky began to nod in understanding before nausea seized her once again.

“It’s best if you lie still,” Charlotte advised. “It’s okay. Just stay here. I’ll hold you.”

“And I’ll hold her,” Alexa added. Becky said nothing, but let Charlotte draw her close, the absence of body heat almost a relief as she rested her cheek against Charlotte’s chest. Becky looked up at Charlotte, trying to keep her face in focus, before eventually giving in and succumbing to sleep, falling still in Charlotte’s arms as her breathing evened out.

“God, it’s like she wants to die,” Alexa remarked, studying Becky’s sleeping face. “We’d better keep an eye on her, in case she needs to go to hospital.”

Charlotte nodded, wordlessly. Even as Becky let out a soft snore that made Alexa giggle, Charlotte couldn’t shake the feeling she was holding something terribly important and terribly dangerous in her arms.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> baby update, life chewed me up and spat me out so i’m just trying to get back into writing

Behind the heavy curtains obscuring the window, Becky could hear the sounds of life in the street below. Confusion gripped her briefly, before she remembered she was in Charlotte’s room, which was always dark. Charlotte and Alexa were tangled around her, their fingers linked, lost in a sleep so deep that it shared a bed with death, Becky’s blood cracking into dark stains where it had dried on their skin. Becky wriggled out from between them, easing herself out of the bed cautiously as though afraid she might wake them, still unable to shake the habit of being careful not to disturb their slumber. They seemed almost seraphic in sleep, both all shades of pale gold, embracing one another like Castor and Pollux. Charlotte had managed to stay relatively clean, only smeared with blood on her thighs and breasts where Becky and Alexa had lavished her with kisses. Alexa’s face and neck and breasts were dark with blood, a garish memento of her fervour, and of their tryst. To Becky, they looked like a painting, a gothic watercolour panel from a macabre Victorian storybook, spattered with gore but with the faces of sleeping cherubs, lost to all in the world but each other. Momentarily, Becky wished she could share their dreaming doze with them, the somnolent spaces that only vampires could understand, somewhere deep beyond the shallow dreamplanes humans could reach. But, she supposed, she was their vessel for sunlight and the world they’d left behind, carrying summer and sunshine in her blood because they could no longer walk amongst it. As she struggled to her feet, a wave of dizziness pulsed through her consciousness and she staggered; of course, the blood loss wouldn’t fix itself over night. Still covered in her own blood, all Becky really wanted was a shower, but the possibility of fainting in the shower was not lost on her, and instead she pulled on a t-shirt scavenged from the top of the laundry basket and made her way through to the kitchen. The shirt smelled like Charlotte, and though Becky would never tell Charlotte to her face, she found it deeply comforting.

“Your ass is out,” Carmella said helpfully, emerging from Sasha’s room behind her. “I think Sarah’s up. Let’s go get breakfast.”

As they entered the kitchen, they were greeted by the delicious aroma of food; Sarah had already gotten started on breakfast.

“Least I could do when you guys gave me a place to stay,” Sarah grunted by way of explanation, clearly still taciturn and wary toward the human contingent of The Garden’s inhabitants, as Becky and Carmella sat at the scrubbed wooden table that had become their primary meeting place and social haunt in the weeks spent living at The Garden.

“Charlotte and Alexa did a number on you, huh?” Carmella remarked reprovingly, nodding in the direction of Becky’s neck. “Have you looked in the mirror? You’re a mess.”

“Forgot about that,” Becky said lamely, shrinking into her t-shirt. “I’ll grab a shower after breakfast.”

“You can wash off the blood, but hickeys don’t wash out, boo,” Carmella laughed, pouring herself a glass of orange juice. Becky was about to respond with a withering quip, when a piercing shriek echoed throughout the house, taking them all by such surprise that Carmella sloshed her orange juice down her front. Sarah moved whip-quick and fluid, gone before Becky could catch a breath; staggered still, she remembered herself and followed suit, the scream seeming to reverberate around the pale walls of the apartments. Ruby sat bolt upright in bed, her nose bleeding freely. As Carmella stumbled in behind her, Becky heard her mutter an expletive.

“What’s happening to her?” Sarah’s voice was higher than usual with panic.

“I don’t know, they’re not supposed to be able to wake up during the day,” Carmella replied, seeming to start forward then halting, uncertain of what to do. Becky clambered onto the bed beside Ruby and grabbed the box of tissues from the bedside table, carefully dabbing at her bloody nose.

“You’re okay,” Becky murmured, Ruby recoiling from her touch with a hiss. Her eyes looked strangely cloudy. “You’re at The Garden.”

“The Garden,” Ruby repeated back, and her voice sounded so pitifully gravelly with disuse that Becky felt herself swallow a burst of rage toward the so-called “scientists” who had done this to her. Now that Ruby was in the safety of The Garden’s walls, Becky could look at her properly. She was worn thin and wan, paler than was usual for even a vampire, her eyes seeming too big, too haunted in her hollow face. Her arms were blotched with track marks, nicks and scratches from what Becky guesses were needles and IVs and other medical paraphernalia. Ruby looked at Becky with frightened confusion, turning blindly to Sarah with her arms outstretched. Sarah complied, leaping onto the bed and shifting to an enormous wolf with a smooth shiver, curling herself around Ruby’s body and nudging her arm with her muzzle. Her huge tail thumped against the bedclothes as Ruby petted her, closing her eyes as she snuffed at the palm of Ruby’s hand.

“Hey Ru,” Carmella said gently, her voice barely above a whisper as she climbed onto the bed. Sarah watched her balefully.

“Hey Mella,” Ruby croaked. “Sorry for freaking out.”

“Don’t apologise babe,” Carmella said gently, passing Ruby a bloodbag clearly pilfered from Charlotte’s stash. “You’ve been through a lot. Here, drink this. You’ve gotta keep your strength up, and something to eat might help you go back to sleep, at least ‘til sundown.”

“I don’t sleep,” Ruby said wearily, before turning to look at Becky with distrust, her awareness of her surroundings gradually returning. “Who’re you?”

“Charlotte’s current squeeze,” Carmella answered for her. Becky huffed irritably, but quietly considered that she wouldn’t have known what to tell Ruby. Who was she, in The Garden? She certainly wasn’t the same person she’d been before she walked through those doors.

“I’m Becky,” Becky settled for the simplest response, Ruby’s rather listless aura suggesting that perhaps keeping things brief was for the best.

“I’d say nice to meet you if we were meeting under better circumstances. I’m Ruby,” Ruby replied, and Becky nodded. Ruby did not extend a hand to shake or even offer a smile, but she relaxed slightly, seeming to recognise Becky was not an immediate threat.

“What do you mean, you don’t sleep?” Carmella asked, her quizzical expression reminding Becky of the way a dog might tilt its head to the side when confronted with a new command.

“I can’t, unless I starve. I guess it’s because of all the stuff they did, but I don’t sleep, and I don’t heal either,” Ruby replied in a monotone, gazing somewhere into the middle distance, carefully expressionless.

“What the heck went on in there?” Becky murmured, shivering slightly at the memory of the bright white walls and bleak fluorescent lighting.

“Maybe we should let Ruby rest, and we can talk all this over with Charlotte after sundown,” Carmella suggested. “It might not be a good idea to start talking about all that distressing stuff so soon after you’ve woken up.”

“Okay,” Ruby nodded. “Can you guys leave me with Sarah? I can’t sleep, but I don’t like getting up during daylight hours. It makes the headaches worse.”

Carmella and Becky chorused a quiet agreement and left Ruby and Sarah alone to rest. Charlotte would know what to do, Becky insisted to herself. She had to.

 

Soap bubbles clung to her hair like seafoam, the water turning pinkish red as she washed away the remnants of blood that still clung to her skin. To Alexa, she looked like a terrible carnivorous mermaid, bathing in the blood of her prey, but still lovely in spite of the gore. Through the warm steam, Charlotte seemed blurred and terribly far away.

“You should get in too,” Charlotte said gently, drawing her knees up out the way to make room for Alexa. “You’re covered in blood.”

Alexa shrugged, before undressing and climbing into the bath beside Charlotte, wriggling into the water up to her shoulders and lying back against Charlotte’s body.

“So what about Ruby?” Alexa asked cautiously, soaping her arms.

“There’s not a lot we can do. I don’t know how to fix this,” Charlotte replied, her voice barely audible. Had Alexa not known Charlotte better, she might have thought she was about to cry.

“Do you know what they were trying to do?” Alexa prodded, turning over to look up at Charlotte. Charlotte blinked a few times, wrinkling her forehead as she pondered Alexa’s query.

“No,” Charlotte said at last. “I have no idea.”

“What do we do now?”

“I don’t know. But I know somebody who does,” Charlotte replied firmly; although Alexa would never admit it, Charlotte could tell she was hoping Charlotte would somehow be able to solve the mess they’d gotten themselves into and save Ruby in one neat feat of vampiric heroism. The Garden depended on Charlotte, and her ability to set everything right. Or rather, her ability to make it look like she’d set everything right. Charlotte dressed problems up in velvet ribbons and kissed them goodbye with a dramatic flourish. So long as everything looked okay, Charlotte was content to believe it would be okay.

However, here was Ruby, most definitely not okay. As much as Charlotte loathed to even entertain the notion, she could only offer the most desperate of suggestions.

“We could call Nattie,” Charlotte murmured, folding her arms and leaning on the edge of the bath contemplatively.

“But you don’t want to do that,” Alexa said through a fanged smirk. “Do you? She already fixed everything else up for you. What’s one more thing to run to mommy about?”

Charlotte flushed and said nothing. Alexa raised an eyebrow smugly. Asking for Nattie’s help was almost too much for Charlotte to bear, but the more she thought about Ruby’s wan, lost face, the more she found herself willing to swallow her pride.

“If Nattie knows what to do, it’s worth it,” Charlotte said decisively, climbing out of the bath without looking at Alexa. “I give more of a damn about Ruby than myself right now. If I have to go to Nattie, I will.”

“Wow,” Alexa replied tonelessly. “I wish you’d ever given that much of a fuck about me.”

Charlotte didn’t answer, leaving the door to slam behind her, punctuating her silence.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wasn't around for a bit, sorry for the break. regular updates will resume forthwith. stay tuned for some new characters.

When Charlotte had said “everything is fucked”, and Nattie had responded “nothing we can’t fix”, Paige had a feeling that Nattie was sorely underestimating her progeny’s ability to cause trouble.  
“You know what Charlotte’s like,” Paige said around a mouthful of toast as Nattie ended her phonecall with Charlotte on a cheery promise to be with her as soon as possible. “The only consistent thing in her life is trouble.”  
“She’s a storm in D cup; it’ll be nothing,” Nattie replied, waving away Paige’s concern.  
“I mean, aside from the fact she’s probably more than a D cup, when has Charlotte ever called you over “nothing”? She must be desperate, Nattie,” Paige said, raising an eyebrow as Nattie bustled happily back and forth, already making preparations for them to leave.  
“Relax. She’s got some new humans for you to play with, stop complaining,” Nattie chirruped, as though she hadn’t heard Paige’s pointed query. “Sounds like there are a few new faces since we last visited. It’ll be nice to see everybody again.”  
“Sure it will,” Paige murmured darkly, fiddling with the buckle on her collar to remind herself that it wasn’t her place to disagree with Nattie’s plans. “It’ll be lovely.”

  
  


“Bitches ain’t shit but hoes and tricks,” Becky said sagely, gesturing to the screen as Sasha wailed about betrayal. Final Fantasy X had been a very emotionally taxing experience for all of them; even Alexa had been following the story as Sasha and Carmella, and now Liv, took turns playing.  
“So what’s the story so far? No spoilers, just up to where we are in the story now,” Ruby asked from the couch, hugging a pillow to her chest. As Liv began to explain, Becky watched Sasha mess with the sphere grid in preparation for the inevitable boss battle, trying not to catch Charlotte’s eye; she’d been casting glances at her all night, and Becky couldn’t shake the feeling that Charlotte was building up to asking her something. Curled up on the floor, her enormous tail thumping slightly as Liv reached down to pat her shoulder, Sarah huffed a wolfish sigh that seemed to punctuate the moment of quiet.  
“Hey Becks?” Charlotte’s voice was tentative, but Becky knew there was no pretending not to notice. “I’m gonna go get some more blood for everybody. Wanna come with and get some human snacks for you and Mella and Sarah?”  
Becky nodded, getting off the couch and carefully picking her way across the floor, trying not to step on Sarah, or Sasha, or Carmella on her way over. The moment Charlotte got her in the kitchen, she closed the door behind them.  
“Is somethin’ up?” Becky asked hesitantly, eyeing Charlotte with open concern. “You’ve had ants in your pants all day. Barely sat still.”  
“I called Nattie,” Charlotte said, blurting out the words with a strange panic. “You know, my sire.”  
Becky was nonplussed.  
“...okay?” Becky replied, confused by the way Charlotte was behaving. “That’s cool. Why’d you have to come call me through here to talk about it?”  
“It doesn’t... bother you? That I needed somebody else to help me?”  
“Of course not. More help we can get, the better,” Becky shrugged, offering Charlotte a reassuring smile. At last, the secrecy began to make sense; Charlotte was worried that calling Nattie was a sign she couldn’t handle things by herself, that her followers would see her as weak. Becky moved to wrap her arms around Charlotte’s stolid form, her hands resting on the small of her back comfortingly. Charlotte rested her cheek on the top of Becky's head.  
“I'm... scared, Becks,” Charlotte murmured, barely audible. “I've never seen a vampire who doesn't sleep before. Never. There aren't even any stories or legends about them.”  
“Guess Ruby's the first one,” Becky replied softly, squeezing Charlotte slightly. “Guess we'll just have to make our own stories and legends.”  
“Nattie's even older than me, and knows even older vamps besides; if she can't think of somebody who knows something, we might be fucked,” she said, pulling out of the embrace to look down at Becky with her brows furrowed in concern.  
“Just because somethin' hasn't happened before doesn't mean it's some totally unsolvable ultimate disaster,” Becky reasoned. “You said yourself, this isn't like anythin' you've ever seen before. Of course you're gonna have no idea where to start. But you're not on your own. You've got all of us, and others too. We'll figure somethin' out.”  
“Yeah,” Charlotte said slowly, her expression softening. “Thank you, Becky.”  
Becky stood on her tiptoes to brush Charlotte’s lips with hers in response.  
“We got this, babe. Hard part's over; we rescued Ruby. Now we just gotta keep goin',” Becky told her as she began to fetch some snacks from the fridge, remembering the pretence Charlotte had used to invite her for a private conversation. “We're a team. Let's all just enjoy tonight, all together. We can talk about this shit once Nattie gets here.”  
Charlotte nodded, blowing out a soft sigh as she pushed her golden hair out of her face with one hand. She didn't want to think too hard about what would happen once Nattie got there; she had feeling that, no matter what Becky said, the difficult part had only just begun.  
  
As dawn fretted at the very edge of the horizon, Ruby watched morosely from The Garden's sloping, tiled roof, picking at a clump of lichen clinging to the slate. Becky appeared through the skylight beside her, hanging over the edge of the window and holding the glass pane aloft with one hand.  
“Hey, you're gonna wanna come back inside soon. Charlotte said we should still keep you out of the sunlight,” Becky said apologetically, gesturing at the sky as the blue light of morning crept ever upward from the distance, shot through with pale gold. Ruby shrugged.  
“Don't even know if the sunlight does anything to me any more,” she replied nonchalantly, swinging her legs against the guttering. The garden seemed dizzyingly far below, a strange, cold green in the gloom.  
“Probably best if we don't wait and see, considerin' that your healin' isn't workin' as it should,” Becky said, her tone irritatingly sensible. Ruby studied her face with a half-smile that left Becky feeling somewhat disconcerted.  
“You're starting to forget what morning looks like, aren't you?” Ruby asked, dragging her gaze away from Becky and back toward the glowing skyline. “When you fall in love with a vampire, sunrises are just one of those things you give up without even realising you're doing it.”  
Becky was silent; she hadn't enjoyed a morning in weeks, always sleeping late due to her adjustment to Charlotte's nocturnal schedule.  
“That was one of the things that fucked Alexa up when Charlotte turned her,” Ruby continued. “Missing the sunshine. And summer; the days are even longer in summer, so the window for vampire activity is so much smaller. Alexa was always a summer bloomer; she always says Charlotte stole her summers.”  
“I don't think I'd miss it too much,” Becky shrugged. “Ireland isn't exactly known for its summers; I'm more suited to dreary weather anyways.”  
Ruby slowly eased herself across the roof tiles and down into the skylight as Becky held it open for her.  
“Everybody thinks that until they can't ever feel the sun on their skin again,” Ruby replied evenly. “Whatever you and Charlotte have going on... I don't wanna know the details. Just... Don't let her turn you. It's never worth it.”  
“Where has this come from all of a sudden?” Becky asked, eyeing Ruby with concern. “Are you regrettin' bein' turned, or somethin' else?”  
“I just don't want you to hurt Charlotte. Everybody wants forever until she gives them forever; I'd sooner see her grieve for you at the end of your pitifully short lifespan as she watches you age and moulder away to your grave whilst she stays young and vital and golden,” Ruby mused. “Alexa was supposed to love her forever, that's why she turned her. You'll no doubt have seen how well that worked out. Don't put her through that again.”  
“I would never-” Becky began, before swallowing her words. “I won't. I'm not about to let anybody turn me anyways.”  
Ruby shrugged non-committally, as if to suggest she'd believe it when she saw it, and Becky didn't blame her. The more time passed, the more she'd come to realise that Charlotte's relationship body count likely rivalled the amount of prey she'd slain over the years; she drank people dry emotionally as well as physically, and Becky had managed to fall hard for he. Much to her chagrin, she'd wound up in exactly the situation Carmella had warned her about.  
“Charlotte's Web is hella tangled,” Ruby said softly, as if reading Becky's thoughts.  
“Yeah,” Becky replied quietly. “It is.”  
  
“Still looks the same as last time,” Paige commented as Nattie hauled their bags out of the taxi, tipping the driver a little extra for helping. “The urgency in her voice made me expect a whole lot more, uh... destruction.”  
“Charlotte's a good girl, she won't have brought bad business into The Garden,” Nattie reasoned, carrying both her and Paige's bags easily. As they walked round the back, Paige paused to admire the garden.  
“I'm glad they kept the flowers, even though Bayley's not around,” she said, lightly touching the dewy blooms of a hydrangea. “Wonder if she'll come back.”  
“She'll come back,” Nattie said confidently, ringing the buzzer for the apartments. “She just needs some time. Hey Mella.”  
Carmella didn't even manage to squeak out a greeting as she wrenched the door open and leaped into Nattie's arms, ecstatic to see you again.  
“Nattie! You look amazing, as always! And Paige!” Carmella's voice was so bright that Paige found herself smiling. “Come in. Boy, do we have a lot to tell you. And some people for you to meet.”

 

 


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me? using porn as filler? it’s more likely than you think
> 
> actual plot content will resume shortly, i needed a chapter to break stuff up a bit bc imo it was a bit crowded together

Becky was used to Charlotte being away from The Garden; it wasn’t uncommon for her to travel further afield to hunt or take care of other business she insisted everybody else was “better off not worrying about too much”. She came and went as she pleased, like a painfully aloof and violently temperamental cat. However, Nattie and Charlotte had left to “talk things over” hours ago, and dawn was fast approaching. Nattie had left her human, a slender, dark haired girl named Paige, with Becky and Carmella. Paige, to Becky’s surprise, seemed almost uncomfortable around other humans, preferring to stay close to Alexa. She barely spoke to the other vampires, despite Liv’s quiet fascination with her, and Becky and Sarah may as well have been invisible for all she acknowledged them. Carmella kept her distance, keeping herself busy cooking something for the non-vampires in the kitchen, whilst everybody sat in an awkward silence in the next room. Leaning against the kitchen door frame, Becky watched as Carmella stirred a pan of bubbling red sauce whilst Sasha, sat on the countertop, looked on wistfully. Sequestering herself in the kitchen had become Carmella’s favourite pastime now she had other humans to cook for, though Sasha typically kept her company.

“Smells delicious in here,” Becky commented, smiling as Carmella flushed slightly at the compliment. “You know, since you got more friends around here who don’t just eat blood, your cookin’ has gotten insanely good.”

“Come try some, it’s pasta puttanesca tonight,” Carmella told her, fishing a spoon out of the drawer and scooping up some sauce for Becky to taste. 

“God, that’s amazin’,” Becky mumbled with the spoon in her mouth, peering over into the pot. “Is Paige eatin’ with us?”

The pot of sauce bubbled stolidly in response as Carmella shrugged delicately. 

“Paige is... I dunno what’s she’s doing. She’s an enigma in her own right. She’s closer to one of the vamps than one of us,” Carmella explained in an undertone. “If you can get her to talk about it, her entire upbringing makes for an interesting bit of vampire history.”

“Did Nattie raise her?” Becky asked, her curiosity piqued. Sasha shook her head.

“No, Nattie... well, Nattie rescued her-“ Sasha began, falling silent as Paige appeared in the doorway. Looking at her, Becky supposed it was almost funny; she looked the most like the traditional idea of a vampire out of all the vampires she’d met so far, with her goth aesthetic, pale complexion and glossy black hair, and yet she was human. Almost painfully human now she stood before her, her dark eyes enigmatic and distant. Where her sweater slipped down to show her collarbones, Becky could see a considerable amount ofbubbled scar tissue, old bites that still seemed to boil beneath her skin. The scars rippled as she moved, and Becky suddenly felt very aware of exactly what she was to Charlotte; a free lunch. She picked at the edge of her cast awkwardly, suddenly aware of Paige raising her eyebrows at the broken arm.

“Charlotte play too rough?” Paige asked, her voice velvet, causing Becky to shiver slightly.

“Huh? Oh... nah, this was just baby vamps bein’ baby vamps. Didn’t like us tryin’ to round her up,” Becky said, waving away Paige’s question with her bad arm, feeling strangely self-conscious. She could feel Sasha bristling behind her.

“Kind of forward to just show up and start asking those kind of questions,” Sasha remarked with a frown, dislike evident in the taut line of her mouth. Paige just shrugged at her, though she spared the briefest up and down glance to ensure Sasha felt the weight of her contempt. Sasha hissed softly in response, but Paige simply turned and left, entirely unabashed.

“What’s your problem?” Becky murmured, as Sasha continued to eye the spot where Paige had been standing with suspicion. Sasha had no time to reply; the quiet was punctuated by a horrified yelp from the next room.

 

“Will she be okay?” Becky asked Nattie quietly as Charlotte stood shirtless in front of the bathroom mirror, jimmying bullets out of her stomach with a butter knife whilst Carmella protested weakly from outside, unable to handle the sight of her boss and occasional paramour jamming cutlery into herself. 

“I’ll be fine,” Charlotte said curtly. “Buckshot is always a bitch.”

“She was trying to show me St Philomena’s. Everything was fine, until suddenly it wasn’t. It was like they knew we were there,” Nattie murmured. “And there’s no way a human would’ve known.”

“They have a vampire,” Becky said suddenly. “Carmella and I saw one.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Sasha cried, throwing her hands up as Charlotte let out an exasperated sigh, the sound of bullets plinking into the sink echoing. “Though considering you two humans share a braincell, I’m not surprised neither of you thought to tell us.”

“Nobody asked,” Carmella replied defensively. 

“You really need to think of these things,” Nattie advised gently, looking at Becky and Carmella with reproving, motherly expression. “They’d have had us scented from the moment we got within a mile of the place. No wonder we barely made any headway.” 

“So what now? They have a watchdog; there’s no way we’re gonna have surprise on our side, and if we charge in there, we’ll start an all out war between the humans and the vamps. It’ll look like an act of terrorism,” Sasha said unhappily, moving to assist Charlotte in mopping up the blood trickling down her torso and into the furrows at her hips. Sasha’s hands were tender and deft, cleaning Charlotte up with an ease that seemed to imply she was used to this kind of thing. 

“Can’t you just kill their guard vamp?” Becky asked, looking between the vampires quizzically. “Get him out the way?”

“We don’t... kill our own very often,” Charlotte said flatly, letting out a soft, high pitched gasp as Sasha gently eased the last bullet out. Becky looked blankly at her destroyed torso, her brain unable to process the gore. It felt like looking at a teddy bear losing its stuffing, but visceral somehow, deeply wrong. 

“It’ll heal on its own,” Sasha cut in, seeing Becky’s expression. “It’ll be gone in a couple of days. Don’t worry. She’s tough.”

Sure enough, Charlotte seemed entirely unfazed, and the flesh was already quietly knitting back together.

“I brought her up to be the toughest she could be,” Nattie added. “That aside, as for what to do, I think we need to speak to Asuka.”

“Asuka?” Becky sounded out the name, a question that seemed to hang in the air like cigarette smoke, deadly and bitter.

 

Sometime later, curled up in Charlotte’s bed with Carmella and Sasha, Becky broached the question of the mysterious name Nattie had mentioned. Carmella was sitting at the end of the bed, picking at the embroidery on a cushion as Charlotte sat on the floor, rifling through her bookshelf. Sasha was lying on top of the duvet, resting her head on Becky’s thighs and scrolling through Tumblr, Becky sitting propped up against Charlotte’s pillows.

“What are you looking for?” Carmella asked, tilting her head as Charlotte began pulling heavy volumes off the shelves and placing them in a stack at her side.

“Old vampire word,” Charlotte answered, her tone brisk. “Back in my earlier days I got super into the whole vampire history thing. We’ve been around for a long ass time.”

“How could I forget?” Sasha said drily. “I spent an hour trying to explain the thirty to fifty feral hogs thing to you a few weeks back and you still don’t understand how the meme works.”

“I don’t get the joke,” Charlotte scowled petulantly, turning to hurl a book bound in green leather directly at Sasha, who caught it with ease.

“You’re losing your touch, old lady,” Sasha crowed, sitting up to grab Becky with sudden, pantomime passion. “Watch out, I’ll take over your kingdom and steal your thralls.”

“Stupid magical double sire progeny reflexes,” Charlotte grumbled, turning back to her books as Carmella took the book from Sasha and began to flick through it. 

“So what does all this history have to do with all this mess?” Becky asked, flushing slightly at the pressure of Sasha’s arms around her waist. “And who’s Asuka?”

“You don’t blush easy, Bex,” Sasha purred. “You got a crush?”

“Leave her alone Sasha,” Charlotte sighed without looking up, shifting to sit cross legged amongst the mess of books as she leaned through the delicate pages of an ominous looking grimoire. “History’s important. Shit like this? Usually goes way back. St Philomena’s isn’t a new organisation; they’ve got a bit of experiencing fucking with the vamp community.”

“Mhm,” Becky murmured, trying to focus on Charlotte’s voice rather than Sasha’s hands sliding firmly under her shirt to rest on her hips, her fingernails pressing into the soft skin almost viciously. Sasha’s breath in her ear made her jump.

“You’re turned on,” Sasha whispered. “I can hear all the blood rushing through your veins, coming to the surface to bloom in all the places you wish I would kiss.”

“Sasha for fuck’s sake,” Charlotte barked. “We’re trying to have a real conversation about a very real threat. Stop fucking with her. If you’re going to fuck my girlfriend in my bed, at least wait until I’m out of the room.” 

“Girlfriend?” Becky’s voice was hopeful; there was that word again. Girlfriend. Every time Charlotte said it, her heart fluttered. 

“I’m just trying to lighten the mood,” Sasha pouted, though her expression turned to a sly smile as Carmella crawled across the bed to wriggle under the blankets with her and Becky. Becky tried not to think about the soft tangle of Carmella’s thighs with hers, the gentle brush of her lips against Becky’s shoulder as she got comfortable.

“It’s nearly dawn,” Carmella pointed out. “Can’t we cuddle a little before you guys go to sleep? I’ll do all the reading tomorrow and we can figure out Nattie’s plan whilst it’s still early in the night.”

Charlotte sighed, setting down the book she was holding and climbing onto the bed. 

“You’re right. I’m too tired for this stuff right now. I just keep reading the same sentences over and over again,” Charlotte mumbled, trying to stifle a yawn as she found her way under the blankets and into the ridiculous cuddle pile that had formed whilst her back was turned. Becky seemed to just fit into the mass of limbs and cold bodies like she belonged there, sharing a bed with death. Carmella’s hand was warm as she threaded her fingers through Becky’s; Charlotte’s body was cold as Becky curled up against it. Behind her, Sasha seemed to tremble with poorly contained energy, her arms cool and hard, locking Becky in a marble embrace. 

“When you said vampires were uh... cuddly and affectionate, you weren’t kiddin’,” Becky remarked, her words muffled as her face was pressed up against Charlotte’s chest.

“No,” said Sasha slowly, sitting up and slowly coaxing Becky’s t-shirt off over her head. “We weren’t.”

“Is this a thing that’s happening now?” Carmella asked Charlotte, raising her eyebrows. Charlotte shrugged then nodded, leaning over to pull Carmella in close so she could feed from her and unzip her dress at the same time. Becky noted the way Sasha’s jaw tensed slightly at the sight of Charlotte making use of Carmella.

“Jealous?” Becky asked, her hands trembling slightly as she played with Sasha’s hair. She’d never had a fourway before; she hadn’t expected the two nerds that spent all their time arguing over video games to be her partners either. Charlotte? Well, Becky had learned not to make the mistake of expecting anything specific from Charlotte; she was a law unto herself. It was easier to go with the spontaneity rather than trying to predict her next move. 

“Jealous is a way to put it,” Sasha shrugged, raking her fingernails up Becky’s back achingly slowly. “I prefer territorial.”

Becky could hear the wet, throaty sound of Charlotte laughing against Carmella’s skin as she fed. Sasha shrugged the implied taunt off, gently taking Becky’s hand and raising her wrist to her lips. Becky tensed, expecting the sudden, piercing agony of being bitten. 

Carmella, too lost in the numbing, aching suck of being fed from so greedily she could feel Charlotte bruising her lips against her skin, hadn’t noticed; Charlotte growled softly, and Sasha dropped Becky’s arm, letting it fall limp and unblemished to Becky’s side. Becky was... disappointed? Relieved? She wasn’t sure; her heart was pumping so violently she was certain it was deafening for the two vampires in the room. She pictures the waterfall sounds of an arterial gush, the wet scarlet flood of her chambered insides; nausea sent her dizzy and she lay back into the sheets, her head swimming. Becky felt like Eve, tangled in the thick, slithering coils of a terrible snake, the sky promising an elysian if she could stay the wild desire to taste the unknown. She didn’t want to resist as Sasha began to ease off her clothes, pressing kisses to every bare, freckled plane of skin she exposed. She felt bizarrely heavy, her limbs leaden and yet somehow like she was wrapped in a hazy pink cloud, her insides aching for an impossible closeness, her lungs seeming desperate to burst free of her chest and escape the anchor of her body. Every breath seemed too full for her chest, rosy and half-gasped as Charlotte’s bloody lips found hers, and Carmella’s warm body pressed close, slightly sticky with blood, and Sasha’s elegant hands gently parted her thighs. 

“Is this what you want?” Charlotte asked gently, almost discreetly, her words the barest whisper into her hair, the romance of her sighing speech barely breeze enough to disturb wildflowers. 

“Yes,” Becky was decisive, even if she could only whisper. “Please.”

 

Sasha laughed incredulously from underneath Charlotte, lost in her golden mane as Charlotte’s lips wandered across her breasts teasingly. 

“God Becky,” Sasha gasped between breaths as Charlotte pushed her thighs apart with bruising force. “You’re loud.”

Becky, splayed beside her, her hand gripping Sasha’s leg with increasing aggression, could only let out a throaty groan in response as she began to peak, her other hand firm on the back of Carmella’s head, her hips rolling beneath her kisses. 

“She’ll sing like a little bird for you if you know what you’re doing,” Charlotte murmured against Sasha’s skin, raising her head to look into Sasha’s eyes with a strange, feral want, her hands wandering as she pushed into Sasha with a single motion. “And so will you.”

Her words were drowned out abruptly as Sasha cried “oh God”, seeming to melt into her, dizzy against the pressure, the feeling of almost unbearable fullness as Charlotte slid the strap into her. Carmella resurfaced with glistening lips as Becky watched Charlotte in awe, the muscles in her shoulders rippling with every thrust, her powerful arms braced to hold her up as she pounded into Sasha, who looked impossibly dainty beneath her, her hands desperately scrabbling at Charlotte’s back. Carmella drew Becky close, pressing kisses to her collarbones, Becky’s thigh sliding between hers as she pulled herself onto Becky’s lap.

“They’re beautiful together,” she breathed dreamily, turning Becky’s cheek gently so she could kiss her on the lips, leaving her shining with the taste of herself. 

“She’s so rough with her,” Becky whispered in quiet awe, watching as Charlotte’s hand settled at Sasha’s throat, squeezing, squeezing, as Sasha begged and gasped and coughed and moaned in equal measure, “daddy” a wet and cherry-coloured word on her teasing lips, curved in a smirk even as Charlotte crushed the life out of her. 

“They’re vampires. They don’t break easy,” Carmella said, losing interest in the show beside them and pulling Becky into a deeper kiss. “How long since you’ve been with a human?”

Becky had to pause to think, her thoughts punctuated by the sound of Charlotte and Sasha beside her, Sasha demanding “harder” in a harsh whisper with every thrust. This was not the lovemaking Charlotte saved for her, the gentle trip of cold fingertips up and down her rib cage, the cool gasps against her neck, the steady, comforting weight of Charlotte on top of her. This was not Charlotte beneath her, sobbing “I love you” and seizing Becky’s face in both hands, smattering her face with tiny, moth-like kisses. Becky had expected to be jealous; instead she was warm with the satisfaction that Charlotte saved a secret heart for her. Even with Sasha mewling beneath her, Charlotte’s gaze fell on Becky, full of an animal lust that made Becky shiver. As Carmella lay down on top of Becky, resting her head on her chest, Becky realised she hadn’t answered her. Playing with her golden curls, Becky mused, raising Carmella’s hand to her lips to press sweet little kisses to her knuckles.

“It’s been a while,” Becky admitted at last as Sasha finished with Charlotte and rolled over to rest her head on Becky’s shoulder. Charlotte, disentangling herself from the strap, moved to Becky’s other side, Carmella straddling her thigh as she draped herself across Becky and Charlotte’s bodies, resting her cheek on Sasha’s abs as they fluttered with every post-coital shudder and gasp. 

“It’s been a while for me too,” Carmella reassured her. “I’m glad it was you.”

“I’m glad it was you too,” Becky murmured, shivering pleasantly at the recollection of Carmella’s searing kisses, the velvet tongues poetry she’d spelled out somewhere in the dark between her thighs.

Sasha grabbed Becky’s jaw and yanked her roughly into a kiss before she could get too lost in her dreamy afterglow, breaking away to lean over and give the same to Carmella.

“You’re good humans,” Sasha told them breathlessly, closing her eyes. Charlotte kissed Carmella once, briefly, but it lingered, her kiss pausing for a longing moment, her teeth catching Carmella’s lip. As if reaching out to its origin, the wound on Carmella’s neck began to bleed again. 

“I remember when you were mine,” she murmured, before stroking Sasha’s cheek reverently. “And you. And now you’re each other’s, but still mine, deep down. Everybody is.”

Charlotte paused, pulling back to look at Becky with a strange sincerity, her expression dreamy and distant. Becky wasn’t sure if it was blood drunkenness or a post-coital glow.

“You know, I’d never been anybody else’s,” Charlotte said carefully, rolling over to lie on her stomach, propped up on her elbows with her chin in her hands. Becky noticed she was flecked all over with tiny poppy petal smears and flourishes of blood. “Not even Nattie’s. And nobody’s before that. I didn’t do the whole thrall thing.” 

“Is that unusual?” Carmella asked, tracing the delicate ripple of Charlotte’s spine with her fingers. Sasha sat up, pulling Becky into her lap and pressing soft kisses into her shoulders as they watched Charlotte with interest. Becky went willingly, a quiet, delirious laugh rippling through her as she considered how ridiculous tiny Sasha looked just hauling her around as she pleased.

“Yeah,” Charlotte shrugged. “The way turning somebody works... you gotta feel something for them to do it.”

“Why didn’t you ever turn me?” Carmella questioned. “Just out of curiosity.”

“You’re flowers; you’re not meant to be forever, sweetheart,” Charlotte told her sadly. “You don’t have a hard enough heart for it.”

“There are no sweet vampires,” Sasha added. “We don’t live and die pretty. We’re overstaying a welcome out of spite.”

“Would you ever turn me?” Becky asked cautiously. Charlotte studied her face for a long time.

“No,” Charlotte said finally. “I said earlier, I’d never belonged to anybody. People only ever belong to me. But now I belong to you, and I couldn’t bear to chain you to me forever. Nobody deserves that.”

“I want your forever,” Becky murmured, before she could swallow the words. Carmella squeezed her leg reassuringly. 

“Some people aren’t suited to forever,” Sasha shrugged. “Even when they’re only people you could ever imagine spending forever with. Sometimes they can’t make that sacrifice for you.”

“Stop moping about Bayley,” Charlotte snapped, giving Sasha a gentle shove. “She’s coming back. Whatever she chooses will be the right choice.” 

“Bayley’s Sasha’s soulmate,” Carmella translated. “She’s human right now.”

“Turning somebody you love is like a marriage on hard mode,” Charlotte explained. “If anybody knows it, it’s me.” 

“She’s trying to decide if she wants to die loving me, or to sell her soul to me,” Sasha said grimly. “It was a shitty position to put her in.”

“So wait, Bayley’s your girlfriend?” Becky asked, confused and still slightly dazed from Carmella’s efforts.

“Fiancée,” Sasha corrected, wiggling her fingers and flashing an engagement ring that looked like it would’ve paid Becky’s wages for the next five years. Becky raised her eyebrows so high they threatened to disappear into her hairline.

“Didn’t peg you for the marriage type,” she said with a snort of disbelief. “I thought you just liked flashy jewellery.”

“You didn’t peg her at all, Charlotte did,” Carmella pointed out, looking incredibly pleased with her terrible pun as Charlotte faceplanted into a pillow and groaned theatrically. Sasha, pretending she hadn’t heard either Carmella or Becky, continued.

“I got a stupid idea in my head. She proposed to me, I said yes, then I asked to turn her.”

“Then what?” Becky pressed, inching closer to hear Sasha’s story.

“She said she had to go say goodbye to her family, but that she didn’t know how long it’d take. She told me she’d come back when she was ready,” Sasha said, looking away with fierce embarrassment as tears began to well against her lash line. 

“Family don’t always take too well to the, uh, eloping with a vampire thing,” Charlotte said, rolling onto her back and pulling Carmella on top of her playfully, her hands on Carmella’s hips as she straddled her. “Didn’t approve when Mella did it.”

“Hey, I didn’t elope,” Carmella protested. “And truthfully I think my dad was angrier about the whole being a stripper thing rather than the whole... being stolen away by a vampy lesbian leather daddy with a flashy car and too much money.”

“What father doesn’t want a douchebag with deep pockets for his daughter,” Sasha shrugged. “Charlotte fits the bill perfectly.”

Charlotte swiped at Sasha, jostling Carmella as she did so and rolling off into the pillows. Sasha dipped to avoid it, hiding her face in Becky’s hair. Becky laughed at the playful altercation, but her laughter caught in her throat as she felt Sasha fangs press lightly against her jugular, so sharp that blood had already started beading around them.

“I wouldn’t,” Charlotte recommended. “I respected you enough to leave Bayley well enough alone when it was clear you were in love with her.”

“She only ever had eyes for me,” Sasha said smugly, pulling away from Becky. Becky hurriedly crawled across the bed into Charlotte’s arms, almost apologetically. 

“Wait, dial it back, hold on, give me a second,” Carmella said, rubbing her temples. “Charlotte did you just indirectly imply that you’re in love with Becky? Because if so, I’m gonna need you to take that shit back and tell her that when you’re not in the middle of post-fourway shittalking. You are LITERALLY the worst girlfriend in the world, oh my god.”

“You’re in love with me?” Becky’s voice turned hoarse, cracking as it shot up and octave. “Like for real for real?”

“What the fuck did you think I meant all those times I said I loved you? When I told you I belonged to you?” Charlotte asked, hiding in Becky’s hair to avoid the conversation.

“Yeah okay, this is all really cute, but can we please not do confessions of love like immediately after both of you have been inside me, because that’s making me feel kinda awkward,” Sasha deadpanned, shaking her hair out of her face and cocking an eyebrow.

“Ditto,” Carmella added. “I wanted to have fun, not wind up in some weird middle aged married suburban couple’s rediscovering-why-we-got-married swinger’s party.”

Charlotte started laughing; it was only as Becky heard the quiver at the very edges of her laughter that she realised Charlotte had been crying. 

“Okay, okay,” Charlotte relented, rolling her eyes. “Sorry for making it awkward. Speaking of which, sun’s gonna be all the way up in the next five minutes, so I’m gonna love y’all and leave you. I gotta go to bed.”

“Me too,” Sasha echoed, sliding off Charlotte’s bed and taking Carmella’s hand. Carmella voice’s was honeysuckle sweet as she wished them goodnight and followed Sasha out of the door. 

“We only have five minutes of the night left,” Charlotte whispered, pulling Becky into her arms and arranging herself comfortably under the duvet. “Don’t make me wish too hard for more.”

“I’m just fuckin’ delighted that somebody would actually want to spend more than twelve hours at a time with me,” Becky quipped, squeezing Charlotte in a ridiculous bear hug. “In fact, any period of hours at a time. Minutes. Seconds.”

“Shut up you fucking idiot,” Charlotte mumbled, her last word muffled as she kissed Becky again, and again, and again. Her cheeks were wet with tears.

“You’re cryin’ an awful lot for somebody who talks so tough,” Becky jeered, stocking her tongue out at Charlotte who smiled knowingly.

“It’s just because, for once, I’m not just here because I exist, or because I’ve got to do the next step in this whole dealing with St Philomena’s thing, or because people depend on me for a place to live. I’m here because I want to be with you,” Charlotte mused. “I’m here because it’s just how we’re supposed to be.” 


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what’s that? me moving the plot along? unheard of

The bookcases seemed to sigh under the grand weight of the leatherbound tomes, their shelves bowing. The wood was polished to a high shine with age and use where the books had been eagerly pulled from the shelves and hastily pushed back between their brethren as countless souls fervently researched, long before the two intrepid, bruised thralls before the books at that moment. Carmella blew out a soft sigh, her hair falling in fine wisps into her face no matter how hard she tried to tie it up out of her way. The dust motes picked out the shape of her exasperation, scattering and turning gold under the syrupy pour of morning sun through the old pane windows. Becky, still feeling a little uncertain of herself, and of where she stood with Carmella after the previous night’s tryst, did not respond; instead, she studied the dusty remains of an old cobweb that clung to the leadwork of the stained glass. 

“There’s... not a lot here on St Philomena’s,” Carmella said with quiet frustration, her voice seemed to reverberate in the musty quiet of the library. “Charlotte was right, they’re old, but most mentions here don’t really touch on the whole vampire thing. Just their relationship with the church.” 

“Mm,” Becky’s response was distracted; truthfully, she hadn’t really taken in any of what Carmella had said.

“Oh for goodness’ sake, Becky, you don’t have to make things weird,” Carmella groaned, leaning back in the green leather armchair she’d chosen as her perch for the duration of her research. Becky looked up, irritation prickling beneath her skin. 

“You know, I didn’t wanna have this conversation in a public library, but why the fuck not,” Becky replied coldly. “I’m not makin’ anythin’ weird. It WAS weird. I went along with it, and I fuckin’ wish I hadn’t, truth be told. There’s a lot of shit Charlotte does that I just... find myself goin’ along with.”

“It was just sex,” Carmella shrugged. “In fact, not even that. Sasha was trying to piss Charlotte off, Charlotte called her bluff. At the end of the day, you know, they’re so much more than us. They turned mind games into a fucking Olympic sport. Sometimes we’re just a part of whatever game they’re playing.”

“You know, when everythin’ is happenin’ and you’re there, lookin’ at her and she’s all golden, you feel like you wanna do whatever, just to stay in the moment with her,” Becky said softly. “I didn’t want... to wind up like this. I wanted her to love me. Not just... pass me around.”

“She does love you,” Carmella reassured her. “She just... doesn’t know how to be in a relationship. This is how Charlotte lives. She’s a pretty simplistic beast, for all she plays up the vampire enigma schtick. She fucks, she eats, she fights, she sleeps. She’d be a hedonist, if any of her indulgences actually made her happy.” 

“I don’t want to be part of some fuckin’... I dunno. Whatever this is. Whatever the Garden is,” Becky answered angrily, standing up so suddenly Carmella shrank back in her chair. “I wish it hadn’t happened.”

“You seemed fine yesterday.”

“Well I’ve slept on it, and I’m not fine,” Becky’s voice trembled as she grabbed her leather jacket and shrugged it on. “I’m not fuckin’ fine at all.” 

Before Carmella could utter a word, Becky had stormed out of the library, the door swinging hollowly in her wake.

 

“What the fuck do you want me to do about it?” Sasha was bleary eyed, Liv a yawning heap on the couch beside her. 

“She’s gone, Sasha,” Carmella repeated, exasperated. “As in... out of here. Upped and left. Last night fucked her up.”

“What happened last night?” Liv asked curiously, but Sasha shushed her.

“Then she shouldn’t turn so spineless around Charlotte,” Sasha replied blandly. “We all learn it at some point. She makes us love her, fucks with our heads, we put ourselves back together because the times where she loves us are too good to go without.”

Paige watched the exchange with a disinterested expression, sitting cross legged on the armchair as she waited for Nattie to get up. 

“If she’s out there by herself, that’s not good,” Carmella insisted. “You forget she’s St Philomena’s number one enemy right now.”

“She’s not alone,” Paige said calmly, her face maintaining its usual expressionless mask.

“Fucking okay, I get it, you’re on the whole we-are-the-weirdos-mister trip, but can you try not being cryptic and edgy for like five seconds?” Sasha replied, a poorly suppressed hiss of annoyance turning her words sibilant. 

“She’s with Alexa, idiot,” Paige sneered. “You’d know if you actually paid any attention to anything outside of yourself and video games.”

Sasha ignored her.

“Do you think she’ll be okay?” Carmella asked worriedly, biting her lip.

“With Alexa? Of course. Alexa’s the concept of malice condensed into a person, nobody’s about to fuck with Becky with her around,” Sasha said decisively, seemingly content to drop the conversation now she had assured herself Becky was at least somewhat safe. Carmella remained unconvinced, but she said nothing, moving to peer out the window at the dark street below as though the shadows might hold some clue as to what to do next. The street remained silent, empty, and entirely uninspiring. Had Carmella looked out another window, facing into The Garden of Earthly Delights’ far less exotic-sounding actual garden, she might’ve witnessed an interesting development. However, the fact remained that Carmella had not looked out of a back window, and instead had drowsed around the front room looking malcontented. Outside, somewhere else in the dark, Becky started to cry.

 

“I dunno, Lexi,” Becky sniffed, curled up in the passenger seat. She was uncomfortable, the seatbelt cutting into her as she crouched with her knees drawn awkwardly up to her chest, turned toward the window, but she couldn’t make herself sit properly and risk possibly making eye contact with Alexa. Alexa, eyes on the road as she drove, let out what she imagined was a sympathetic-sounding sigh.

“This is... kind of what Charlotte does. From the moment you got here, you haven’t questioned a thing, right? You’d fallen through the looking glass, and she’d been just so fascinating that you didn’t want to risk standing up for yourself and shattering the illusion,” Alexa said frankly. “You went along with everything. You let her love you, you let her have you for lunch, you let her use you for whatever she needed, because you’ve fallen under her spell and you can’t remember the personality you had before you loved Charlotte Flair.”

“That’s unfair,” Becky protested softly, her heart racing because she knew Alexa was right.

“But it’s not wrong,” Alexa countered, stopping at traffic lights with a tut of irritation. The red and orange glow of the streetlights made her look strange and half-dreamt, sunset coloured and sepia. “Charlotte doesn’t know how to be in a relationship. She’ll claim she did once, and I broke her, but she’s never really... gotten it. She just carries on like everything’s the same, except now she’s got somebody to keep her bed warm. Or cold. Depending on the, uh, persuasion of whoever she’s decided to be obsessed with this week. I’ll give you some credit; you lasted longer than most of her fancies have. Might even outlast me.”

“It feels like sometimes I’m her whole entire world, and sometimes I’m just... lunch. Or somebody to fuck. Or whatever she needs at that moment in time,” Becky murmured, chewing her thumbnail absently. 

“You are,” Alexa shrugged. “But you’re all of those things at once. Charlotte always says she doesn’t mix business and pleasure, but she doesn’t know how to separate any part of her life from whatever else she has going on.”

“Why can’t we just... be?” Becky asked, beginning to cry again as Alexa rolled her eyes; criers always made her feel awkward. “Why can’t she just... be a girlfriend? Why has it gotta be this whole thing where I’m her ‘thrall’? Where I’ve gotta spend all my time in The Garden waitin’ for her to decide what to do with me?”

“The more bodies in her bed, the less she has to think on how she feels about any of ‘em,” Alexa answered flatly. “Charlotte’s kind of shitty at monogamy. She’s kind of shitty at a lot of things. Hell, look how we turned out. What a love story that was.”

Becky fell silent, resting her forehead against the window as she processed Alexa’s words. They’d stung like hailstones, harsh as a scolding, but even as tears trickled onto her collar, she knew they were true.

“Look, she’s been alive a long time. She’s been a queen for most of that time; her entire existence has been awash with women she’s taken, used up, cast aside. But she actually gives a damn about you, believe it or not,” Alexa’s voice was weary, her grip tensing slightly on the steering wheel. “She just doesn’t know HOW to give a damn.”

“So what, am I just supposed to let this happen because it’s just ‘how she is’? I can’t just do what she wants anymore, I can’t-“ Becky began angrily, sitting up to blaze at Alexa, who was entirely unfazed as they pulled into the parking space behind The Garden. 

“Tell her what you want. Tell her she’s an idiot, because she is, and tell her she’s gonna have to either love you properly or let you go,” Alexa told her, the click of her seatbelt punctuating her words. “And if she goes with let you go, consider; did you wanna live the hell you’ve been living in the past six months forever?”

Becky couldn’t answer. Certainly, she did not want to live the way she had in the last few months; she’d barely spoken to anybody, living or dead, who wasn’t resident at the garden. She’d lost contact with the few friends she’d made since moving to America. She hadn’t heard from her family in months. Day and night had switched places; she spent daylight hours lying dazed and woozy from lack of blood in bed. She spent nights on her knees, praying for Charlotte’s love as Charlotte took agonising, bloody communion from her. The times in between, she was trapped, as all of The Garden’s residents were, afraid that leaving would close the doors behind them forever, afraid that leaving meant dying out in a world who didn’t want vampires or their allies living in it, afraid that leaving meant losing Charlotte, the sun in their scattered, directionless star system, forever. 

Yes, Becky realised. More than anything, she was afraid. Afraid of living someone so much; afraid of losing Charlotte, of losing everybody at The Garden; afraid of living without Charlotte to puppeteer her every motion. 

“Feel any better?” Alexa asked gently, resting a comforting hand on Becky’s knee. “A drive always helps me when Charlotte fucks with my head.”

“Not really,” Becky admitted. “If anythin’, I’ve got... a lot more to think about.”

“Take a few days out. Spend some time away from... this place. It gets in your head, fucking Hotel California style,” Alexa advised. “Let Charlie worry about you. Might do her good to have somebody stand up to her for once.” 

Becky stared out of the window at The Garden, her hands working furiously in her lap.

“I dunno... if I can go back in there right now,” Becky said softly, looking up in teary surprise as Alexa threaded her fingers through Becky’s.

“Look,” Alexa began, her tone infuriatingly level and reasonable. “Everybody goes through the ‘finding out Charlotte’s a total dick’ for the first time blues. We’ve all been there. You can’t live without her, but you kind of wish you’d never met her. I know. It’s just... the Charlotte effect. I’ve been spending a lot of time away from The Garden lately, because it was starting to get pretty suffocating in there. I’ve been going between The Garden and a friend’s place lately. Friend’s out of town, left me her keys. You wanna come hide out there and try being human again? Let those bites, and your cell count, heal a little too.”

Becky hesitated; this felt like moving from one situation right into another similar one, and yet Becky had to admit that Alexa’s suggestion was tempting. 

“That actually sounds pretty good,” Becky agreed, and Alexa nodded, restarting the car.

“You wanna go get your stuff? Or will I go fetch it for you tomorrow?” 

“The second one,” Becky confirmed. “I can’t... think about seein’ her right now, because I’ll cry. And you know somethin’, I’m not a crier, but Charlotte might make me one yet.”


End file.
